


The Big Story

by offpanel_archivist



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-03-14
Updated: 2005-03-14
Packaged: 2019-09-06 08:58:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 35,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16829326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/offpanel_archivist/pseuds/offpanel_archivist
Summary: A noir DCU AU by Chicago.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimers: The characters of John Jones (J'onn), Lois Lane, Superman, Clark Kent, Jimmy Olsen, Alfred Pennyworth, Dick Grayson, Bruce Wayne, Iris West, Batman, Lex Luthor, and Perry White and the city of Metropolis are all property of DC Comics, borrowed here for fun, without permission, but not for profit. All other characters belong to me.  
> Debts: Darklady is owed a big one for her beta work on this piece. Any remaining errors or inconsistencies are my fault for not listening well. Also thanks to people who cheered this fic along as it was drafted in my lj.
> 
> Notes: This is an AU, an Elseworld type tale. It does not belong to any 'verse. The setting in Metropolis. The time period is sometime between the two World Wars, late 1930s as a general estimate. I have not been as careful historically as I could have been; the objective has been to produce a "noir" piece, incorporating the style and period features one might expect in a Hammett novel. Hence there has been some artistic license. Not every relationship here will be the same as comics canon. The original impetus for this fic was a slash challenge posted on the DCComicSlash list by Darklady. There is a slash subtext, but it is very much subtext, and a reader who wants to pretend it is not there should have no difficulty ignoring it.
> 
> Rating: G

It was a cliche, but that didn't keep me from appreciating the silhouette against the frosted glass of my office door. It was a woman's silhouette, a trim hourglass that I enjoyed in the space between the time it appeared and the time the door opened.  
That wasn't very long.

She was reaching for the knob (without knocking, of course), and then the door was opening and then she was standing there, leaning her hip against the doorframe and crossing her arms under her breasts. "Hello, Jones."

"Lane." My hand was already going to the handle of the drawer where I kept the whiskey.

Her alert eyes noticed my move, even through the early evening murk of my office, but she didn't comment. Instead she said, "You don't sound happy to see me."

"Should I be?" I asked, thumping down the whiskey bottle and running the cuff of my sleeve along the rim of a chipped coffee cup.

Her eyes were roving around my office, taking in the stained walls and the rumpled blanket on the broken down couch by the windows. I blew dust out of a glass and set it down next to the coffee cup. "Looks to me like you should be happy for any bit of business that walks through this door."

I looked up at her, not bothering to hide the calculation in my gaze. "Business, huh? Well, I don't do business with people who hover in doorways. In or out, Lane."

One corner of her mouth quirked up, revealing a dimple in her cheek that managed to be as ironic as the rest of her. "Two fingers," she ordered, stepping in and closing the door. She hit the wall switch, turning on the bare bulb in the ceiling fixture, and crossed to the client chair in front of my desk. I poured her whiskey into the glass and handed it over. I sloshed more than two fingers into the coffee cup, not caring that she noticed.

And she did notice. "You look like shit, Jones." Her nose wrinkled a bit as if to emphasize the point as she tossed down the booze I'd handed her.

"And here it is a good day," I shot back, swallowing a hard slug of whiskey and feeling it burn its way down to my gut. I didn't have to feel the drink, but there was a value to the numbness it could impart. "Cut to the chase, Lane. What do you want?"

"I told you. Your services."

"My services might not be for sale," I countered, setting down my cup and reaching again for the bottle.

Her hand appeared over the top of the cup, blocking my intent to pour. Her nails were painted red. "Don't do this, Jones."

I set down the whiskey bottle and gave her a steadier look than I think she expected. She at least withdrew her hand. "You think this is how this works? The great Lois Lane snaps her fingers and the private dick comes running? You've already burned me once, and I don't like matches." I refilled my cup and sipped this time, keeping my eyes on her past the rim.

Something flared in her eyes, and her lips tightened for a moment, but then she was back to her smile. She uncrosssed and recrossed her legs, leaning on the arm of the client chair and watching me. She had good legs, but that wasn't what made her a good reporter. She was a good reporter because she knew all the buttons and when to push them. She pushed them now. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't need you, Jones. And it's not about me. There's bigger things afoot."

"Bigger," I repeated, waiting for elaboration.

She continued to study me as I continued to nurse my whiskey. She waited until I was taking another sip. "It's about Superman."

I think she expected me to choke. She liked the dramatic, had a flair for it. I think she was disappointed when I didn't react. Instead I set down my cup. "What, he still can't find room for you on his dance card?"

Her lips tightened again, and her nostrils flared. "You're a son of a bitch, Jones."

"So I've been told. By better dames than you."

But she was already calming herself by the time I'd unleashed my dig. She tossed her hair. "For the record, no. But he's only half the equation anyway. It's about the crimes he stops. Or appears to stop."

She paused, letting the implication of her comment sink in. I let it roll over me. "You think the man in the cape is setting up these heists? That's rich."

"I think he's got a connection at the Planet."

"Yeah, you. Aren't you the one who always gets the scoop?"

She paused, and I saw her upper teeth for a split second, starting to worry her lip and then stopping. Lois Lane didn't have much by way of nervous tics. It made me pay more attention. "I think I'm being used."

I snorted. "Right. So you want me to tail Superman to prove it? How'm I supposed to do that? Rocket pack?"

Her eyes snapped with irritation. "I said there's someone on the inside. I think he's in league with Kent."

Now I laughed, a bitter sound to my own ears. "Clark Kent? The same Clark Kent you think wants you for a beard? What, you think he and Superman are having tete-a-tetes down at the baths or something?"

"Don't mess with me, Jones," Lane growled. "Don't forget what I know."

I gestured around my office, the sum total of what was left of my life. "You're going to make this worse?" But she had me, and she knew it, and I knew it.

"I can pay you the usual rate."

"To tail Superman? Better make it triple."

"Double - and you're not tailing Superman. I want you on Kent."

"You should be on him. He's always with you anyway."

She pursed her lips and shook her head. "That's just it. He's not. Every time there's something newsworthy, when Superman shows up, Kent has already left the scene. Not just once or twice. Every. Time." She punctuated the final two words with her finger tip hitting the surface of my desk.

"Every time?" That was odd, I had to admit.

"Did I stutter?"

I leaned back in my chair and thought. "So you think he's ... calling Superman. Or setting stuff up with him or-"

"I don't know what to think. But it's damned odd, and it's not something I can get to the bottom of by myself."

"Hence me."

"Hence you."

"I want payment up front."

She reached into her tailored suit jacket and pulled out an envelope. Trust her to have a man's style pocket in that lady's suit. "Fifty bucks," she told me, tossing the envelope onto my desk. "You can count it if you want. Thirty bucks daily until the job is done or I fire you, whichever comes first."

I opened the flap of the envelope and peered in at the dead presidents. I didn't count them; Lane wouldn't short me. Not on money, anyway. "For what it's worth, I think your caped man is honest. But I'll take the green."

"If he's honest, it's money well spent. If he's not..." she shrugged, and I realized she was still Lois Lane, still interested in the truth above all. She was a reporter, yes, and had a lot of the negative traits that that profession implied. She was brassy, she was impolitic, but her integrity meant something to her. And to me.

"All right, Lane. I'll start in the morning."

She stood up. "Good. Make sure you dry out before then. And put on a fresh shirt."

I looked down at my shirt with a frown, only looking back up when I heard the latch of the door snapping back into place after her exit. I thought about getting up to lock the door, but no one else was coming by anyway. I stared for a moment at the envelope on my desk, then poured another drink. I raised my cup toward the backward lettering arching across the door, "John Jones, Private Investigator."

"Pleasure to see you again, Lois," I murmured, and then continued getting quietly drunk.


	2. Chapter 2

Morning found me at the Print Room, washing down the breakfast special with a Bloody Mary and sitting in a booth by the window where I could see the entrance to the Daily Planet building. The sun had been up for less than a half-hour, and its light reflected painfully off the upper reaches of the downtown buildings. At street level, though, it was producing a golden glow that gave the grime of the city a surreal quality. It was still too early for bankers and brokers, but the Print Room was packed with its usual clientele: reporters heading to work and gamblers heading home.  
And a few dedicated drunks.

Carol brought me a fresh Bloody Mary before I could ask for one, and I smiled at her back as she took the spent glass away.

I was still watching her go when a man's bulk blocked my view and a palm slammed down on my table. "I was wondering how long it would take you to crawl out from under your rock. Get tired of hiding, Jonesie?"

I finished chewing my mouthful of toast and sipped at my drink.

"Hey!" A broad finger poked at my shoulder. "I'm talking to you, Jones!"

I followed the arm with my eyes until I met the sallow face of its owner. "Well, hi there, Rockwell. Join me for a drink?"

Harry Rockwell pulled back his hand with a scowl. "The only drink I'd like seeing you take is a long one in the East River."

"Come now, Rockwell, that's not very neighborly."

"You're not my damned neighbor, Jones."

I smiled as if to myself. "Oh, that's right. I'm not." I took another sip of my drink.

Rockwell grabbed roughly hold of my shoulder. "That means I don't want to have to look at your mug."

"So don't look," I replied mildly, ignoring the tightening of Rockwell's fingers against my flesh.

"Harry!" Artie's voice rang out from the bar. "Leave him be or I'll put you both out."

Rockwell seemed to think about it for a second, then released my shoulder. I didn't bother to smooth my shirt back down as he turned his back to me, but I heard him mutter something under his breath, and it included the word "Wayne."

I should have let him go, but some injuries demand reaction. I slipped one foot out from my booth and into Rockwell's path as he began to stalk away. He went down like a ton of bricks.

"Son of a bitch!" he roared, scrambling back to his feet. I was out of my booth and ready for him when he lunged for me. I sidestepped, letting him fly past.

"Hey!" a young voice protested, and I winced to see a red-haired boy jostled by Rockwell's stumbling effort to wheel on me and try again. The kid at least had the sense to move out of the way as Rockwell spun.

Rockwell spewed a few words that no one's mother should hear, and I readied myself for his next charge. It didn't come. Instead, a new hand clapped his shoulder from behind.

"Take it easy, Harry."

Rockwell turned to face my quarry, Clark Kent. "Take it easy!?" Rockwell bellowed. "You know who this sumbitch is? Ask him where the bodies are buried, Kent! Ask him!"

"Harry, you want Artie to ban you? Just calm down."

Rockwell glared at his fellow reporter, but Kent was as mild-mannered as ever, a calming presence for his volatile colleague. Rockwell shot a look back at me over his shoulder that in another crowd would have signed my death warrant. Luckily for me, reporters made cats look loyal, and they rarely carried anything more deadly than their pens.

Not that those weren't deadly enough.

Then Rockwell's shoulders slumped a little. "Join Jimmy and me for breakfast," Kent suggested, his eyes moving past Rockwell's angry face to look at me. "I'll be over in a minute."

I reached for my Bloody Mary on the table, took a final swallow, then fished into my pants pocket for a two dollar bill. It made for a generous tip, but I figured Artie didn't need any extra reasons to ban me. By the time Kent walked up to me, I was shrugging my way back into my jacket.

"Jones, is it?" Kent asked, as if he didn't already know, as if he had no inkling about what happened two years ago. And of course, there was no reason he should have. It wasn't his story, and he only met me once. But I knew he remembered. The whole damned city remembered.

"Depends who's asking," I replied, joining him in pretending our paths had not crossed any time before a case and a career and three lives had gone up in flames.

He smiled warmly and held out his hand. "Clark Kent. I'm guessing I don't have to say anything about Harry."

I set my hat on my head and inspected his broad Midwestern features. "Yeah, he and I have met." I grasped the proffered hand and shook it. "John Jones."

His handshake was firmer than his demeanor might suggest. "So I don't need to tell you its probably good to avoid him." He paused significantly. "He eats here a lot."

I smiled sharply. "Funny that. So do I."

Kent's eyes narrowed briefly behind his glasses as he dropped my hand, but it was a fleeting reaction. "I'm just saying it's no good looking for trouble."

I reached into my pocket for another quarter for the table and let Kent watch me add to the tip. "I appreciate the advice," I said, "but last I looked, it was still a free country. See ya around, Kent." I touched the brim of my hat and headed for the door.

I could feel his eyes on me as I left.


	3. Chapter 3

Phil's Barbershop wasn't open yet when I walked out of the Print Room, and since Kent had just sat down for breakfast, I figured I could afford a half-hour to wander. It had been long enough since I'd been in Midtown that there was news to me in the storefronts. Like Ira's Five and Dime, boarded up now, the display windows soaped, and the awning over the front door tattered and faded. A gleaming new drug store parked kitty corner from the neighborhood hangout offered an explanation.  
I recognized the name on the windows; it was a chain store, its polish making Ira's look all the more drab. I wondered what happened to Ira, with his long face and perpetually dour expression. I didn't remember seeing him in the obituaries, but somewhere along the line I got out of the habit of checking them regularly.

There comes a moment when a man has seen too many funerals.

I reached into my coat pocket for my flask and took a pull of whiskey. The faint buzz of the alcohol dimmed the harsher buzz of other voices in my brain.

There were other signs of change in the neighborhood. The streetcar that rumbled past the Planet building was showing up at 7 minute intervals. Two years ago, it had come every ten minutes. There was new construction - high steel - on the corner of Madison and Park Front. The plywood wall facing the sidewalk had knotholes poked through at various heights so passersby could peer in. I walked by without pausing. There wasn't a concrete footing in Metropolis that didn't have a skeleton in it, and it seemed like the city was determined to remind me of my crimes.

That's what I got for returning to the scene.

But Lois asked, and Lois knew more than any human should about me. Enough that she could collapse what little life I had left.

I felt the self-pity creeping over me and I shook it off, taking another nip of whiskey and squaring my shoulders as I put my flask away. I'd given myself enough distance that by the time I got to Phil's, he'd have his door open.

I took Hawthorne across to Monroe, coming back down so I'd be on the opposite side of the Daily Planet plaza from where I started. Phil's looked across the plaza almost directly opposite the Print Room.

I wasn't worried about being made. Kent's cursory examination of me in the Print Room would have told him I needed to get cleaned up. If he saw me, the worst he would do is ask if anyone knew why I was hanging around. There was enough vitriol in the Planet's offices that it would be a couple days before he'd investigate further.

That was a couple of days longer than this case was going to last.

The bell over Phil's door rang as I entered, and Phil looked up from his paper. He was reading the Metropolis Ledger, because that was the way Phil was. If you asked him, he'd shrug. What else should a man read in the shadow of the Daily Planet?

So he looked up from his paper and sprang out of his barber chair with his usual effusive grin. "Johnny!" he greeted, the first person to seem genuinely happy to see me all day. "Where the hell you been?"

I shrugged out of my coat and took off my hat, putting both on the coat tree inside the door. "Around. You know how it goes."

"Of course, of course," Phil agreed. "Shave and a haircut?"

That was also Phil to a T. Be happy to see anyone, accept any answer, get down to business.

I rubbed my jaw as if I were considering even as Phil was whisking me into his chair and tucking a strip of tissue paper around my collar.

"Take five minutes, max. You can't be running around like that, Johnny. They'll think you've gone hayseed." He was already pumping the autoclave and starting the brush in the lather.

"All right," I conceded, and Phil spun the chair a little so I was facing out toward the street. That was another Phil touch; the man took pride in his work. He wanted people to see how he wielded a razor. This had the side benefit of letting me peer past my own cheekbones and Phil's body at the foot traffic on the plaza. Phil was lathering me up when I saw Kent and the red-headed kid - Jimmy, he had called him? - heading into the Planet building.

"Don't smile!" Phil scolded, and I let my cheeks go slack. Phil would have me shaved before anything could bring Kent back out of the Planet offices. I listened as he stropped the razor, and when he touched it to my well-lathered stubble, I almost sighed. It felt like he was shaving off an old self.


	4. Chapter 4

Phil's scissors were working on taking a little off the back when I saw Lois Lane exit the subway and cross the Daily Planet plaza. She was wearing a navy blue suit, the skirt cut a little longer than her usual office look. A concession, I knew; Lane's wardrobe was tailored to the day's interview. If a glimpse of thigh would net her more story, she would use the advantage, but she also knew who would disapprove. More days than not, the glimpse of thigh would win. And, she had told me once, a shorter skirt was easier to run in.  
Ever practical, Lois Lane. I just hoped she didn't have to do any running today.

The ring of the bell over Phil's door cut into my speculation on which repressed official or temperance worker Lane would be interviewing. Phil's steady snip-snip paused.

"Eddie! How ya doin'? Need an early trim?"

The short hairs on the back of my neck, lifted by Phil's paused comb, reacted to the voice that answered. There was a forced huskiness to the usual nasal whine. "Not today, Phil. I'm here to see Jones."

"Of course," Phil acknowledged, returning to his trimming. "So you'll let me even you up on Saturday, as usual, right, Eddie?"

Phil still had me facing out, but I let my eyes slide over to study the man leaning just inside the door, his hat pulled low. "Sure thing, Phil," Eddie Gornicki agreed, putting a cigarette in his mouth. I closed my eyes as he lit a match, waiting until the smell of lit tobacco overrode the burnt sulphur odor to open them. "Heard you was in the Print Room this morning, Jones," Gornicki remarked.

"Damnedest thing," I replied as Phil worked around my left ear, putting himself between Gornicki and me. "Woke up this morning and had an unbelievable hankering for one of Artie's breakfast scrambles."

I could hear Gornicki inhale on his cigarette. "Hell, man, you ain't got breakfast scrambles in Uptown?"

"They always put that chorizo in them."

Gornicki began to laugh, the wheezy sound turning into a cough. Phil, whose hand was on the back of the chair, ready to spin me to work on my right side, relaxed and walked around the chair instead.

Gornicki pounded on his chest. "Damn, Jones, you still all right by me. Whatchya say you buy old Eddie a drink?"

Phil put a hand on my head to keep me from turning and urged me to tip to the side for a better angle. "Old times sake, eh, Gornicki?" I asked.

"You know I'm always good for talkin' to, Jonesie."

Phil gave a final snip by my ear and set down his scissors and dropped the comb back in the sanitizer. "Angie still working at the Madison Tap?" I asked. I didn't know what Gornicki wanted, or what he knew, but he was giving me an excuse to stay in Midtown and in sight of the Planet.

"You know it," Gornicki replied, and I could hear the leer in his voice.

Phil was brushing the cut hair off my skin. "There you go, Johnny." He handed me a mirror as he unclipped the big apron from around my neck.

I gave my reflection a cursory glance. I could see the pale skin along my neck where my hair had been shaggy enough to keep the sun off. I looked like a rube trying to pass for city. Somehow I thought I was feeling just the opposite. "Looks good, Phil," I said, handing him back his mirror as he peeled away the tissue around my collar and gave a couple more strokes with his brush. I stood up and reached into my pocket, pulling out the requisite two bits and an extra dime for Phil's trouble. He accepted the money with a nod.

"Don't be a stranger, now, Johnny. And Eddie - Saturday."

"Yeah, yeah, like you say, Phil," Gornicki answered, opening the door for me as I resettled my hat on my head. He tossed his cigarette into the gutter as we jaywalked across Monroe.

The sun was getting stronger as we crossed the plaza, and I knew I'd be sweating under my coat before the day was over. Gornicki waited until we were out in the open to say anything about why he had to see with his own eyes that I was back in Midtown. "Heard you got into it with Rockwell."

"News travels fast in this neck of the woods," I replied, knowing Gornicki would miss the irony.

"He's bad news, Jones. You're lucky Kent stepped in."

We paused at the intersection of Madison and Siegel, waiting for a chance to cross. "This some kind of warning, Gornicki?"

Gornicki interrupted his back and forth scan of the traffic to chuckle and put a hand to my shoulder. "Jones, when you ever listen to my warnin's? I'm just sayin'."

His hand moved as he began crossing the street, and I followed.

Gornicki was a snitch, something of a fixture in Midtown. He had information on anything for the right price, and for a righter price he would even make sure the information was correct. Usually. Except the times when someone knew who he was snitching to and had the sense to feed bad information.

Gornicki probably thought he owed me on a past investment. Either that, or he was trying to make sure I hadn't developed a craving for revenge in my Uptown rat hole. I couldn't get a clear read on him as I followed him across Madison and stepped up onto the curb in front of the Tap.

"Feels like old times, don't it?" Gornicki remarked as we entered the bar.

I blinked in the dim light of the interior. "Something like that," I agreed, scanning the bar.

"Hey, Angie," Gornicki hailed the waitress over the racket of the wireless behind the bar. I claimed a stool at the plank that crossed the smoke darkened front windows.

"What the hell you want, Gornicki?" Angie shot back, clearly not seeing me. "You know your credit's shot in here."

"Just bring me two -" Gornicki looked back toward me. "Whatchya drinkin' these days, Jones?"

"Jack. Straight up." I wasn't looking to see Gornicki's reaction. My eyes were watching the traffic on the plaza.

"Two Jacks, one straight, one on the rocks," Gornicki called.

"Hope your friend knows he's paying," Angie said, her voice closer, but at a new angle. By the sound of it she was by the bar, probably exchanging looks with the uncertain bartender. The Madison Tap always had uncertain bartenders. The owner paid for shit, was always getting kids barely old enough to shave and training them on how to water down the drinks and survive bar fights. Dom knew as long as he had Angie and Moira to run the floor, uncertain bartenders could be a virtue. By day two on the job, they usually figured out that they hadn't seen anything, hadn't heard anything, and had no idea what anyone had ordered - and never would if they knew what was good for them. They always quit before they'd been around long enough to grow a set.

I turned away from the window. "I got it, Angie," I said, giving her the first view of my face since I'd entered the bar.

I thought I heard her say, "Shit," and then I heard the rock tumblers being set on the bar.

Gornicki settled on to the stool by me with a grin on his mug. "You on a case?" he asked, making a show of noticing where I'd sat us.

A hint of too-sweet perfume invaded our space, and two glasses of whiskey were set roughly on the plank in front of us. "Don't be bringin' any shit in here, Jones," Angie snarled.

"Hey, Angie-babe-" Gornicki started as I took a moment to give Angie a look-over. Her dirty blonde hair was tied back, a couple straggling curls hanging limp along her face. She'd put on a few pounds she could've used anyway. Her arms were bare, and there was no trace of bruising, either there or on her face. For the first time, it occurred to me that something good might've come out of the warehouse fire on the edge of Suicide Slum.

"You're looking good, Angie. How's life treating you?"

She glared at me. "Still working this shit-hole, ain't I? And I mean it, Jones. You ain't too popular in these parts."

I met her glare, and it faltered. "I'm not looking for trouble," I promised her, impressing on her how much I meant it.

She scowled as she blinked rapidly a couple of times. "That don't mean it won't follow you," she muttered, turning on heel and stalking away.

Gornicki watched her go. "I think she's sweet on you."

I picked up the glass of whiskey and took a swallow, not bothering to reply. My stomach welcomed the curdling heat of the booze, and I felt some tension leave my shoulders as the noise in my head blurred enough for me to focus.

Gornicki was watching me. "I heard you crawled into a bottle. Guess they didn't lie."

I lifted the glass, watching the amber liquid catch the filtered light from the window. "Whiskey keeps its promises," I remarked.

I could feel Gornicki pale a little. "Now, Jones, you know-"

"Relax, Gornicki." I smiled at him. "And how could I be on a case? You know anyone around here that would hire me?"

He chuckled weakly. "Yeah, you got a point there. Rockwell was still ranting about you when I stopped in the Print Room, and I didn't hear anyone disagreeing."

"Good to know my reputation is intact." I took another swallow of whiskey. Beside me, Gornicki was settling himself.

"I'd still watch myself, if I were you," Gornicki pointed out unnecessarily, sipping his own whiskey and joining me in watching the increasing throng on the plaza. "That Clark Kent was looking mighty interested in what Rockwell had to say."

I snorted. "You got me buying you whiskey to tell me to watch out for Clark Kent? Thanks, Gornicki." I tossed back the final swallow of my whiskey.

"Wait, Jones. You don't know what I know." Gornicki sounded anxious, probably worried I would leave.

I gave him a skeptical look. "I'm not worried about what some milquetoast reporter thinks of me."

"Come on, Jonesie. Have another drink. Where else you got to go?"

I made a show of thinking about it. Then I called, "Angie, two more."

"Good man, Jones," Gornicki approved. "You always been a reasonable guy."

"Too reasonable," I muttered.

"What was that?" Gornicki asked, but then Angie was back. She dropped down our new glasses and waited impatiently as Gornicki finished the last of his first drink. "Thanks, doll," he said with a grin. She answered him with a withering look and left again.

"To reasonable men," Gornicki toasted, and I half-heartedly clinked my glass against his. We both sipped, and then he smacked his lips and began speaking again. "Good man, that Jack Daniels. Anyway, problem with Kent is he's a busybody type. Listens a lot. Schemin' type, you know?"

"Kent? Please."

"You ain't been around like I been. There's guys that's quiet 'cuz they yellow or 'cuz they stupid, and there's guys is quiet 'cuz they smart or hidin' somethin'. Kent ain't yellow, and he sure ain't stupid."

Gornicki was hitting a "trust me on this" point of conversation, and I swallowed some more whiskey, using the silence to try to get a better read on what Gornicki knew. Trouble was, Gornicki was so full of half-truths and could-be truths I wasn't sure he knew which parts of his stories were lies. Nonetheless, whatever run-in he'd had with Kent had left an impression, and I filed that information away. Someone turned up the wireless as the new Dinah Washington song started playing.

"Fine. Kent's not stupid. He's also the guy that pulled Rockwell off me this morning before things got ugly."

"Rockwell's always ugly," Gornicki pointed out, giving one of his wheezy laughs at his own humor. He pulled a pouch of tobacco out of his pocket and set it on the plank.

"I didn't expect him to be so hot after all this time." My eyes were looking back out at the plaza, and I kept a frown off my face as I saw Lois and Jimmy running out of the front doors of the Planet building. She was hailing a cab, and he had a camera around his neck.

Gornicki was giving me a surprised look. "Din't you know? He was lookin' to get somethin' started with that chippie who went down in that Wayne thing." He went back to peeling a cigarette paper from the bundle in his hand. Lois and Jimmy were getting in the cab, and there was no sign of Kent.

"Rockwell was?" I asked, feeling the usual cold in my gut as Hortense Arroyo's face floated up in memory. If Kent wasn't heading out, I could feed that cold feeling more whiskey. I tossed back what was left in my glass and flagged Angie for another.

"Yeah. Came out quiet like after the flap started to die down. Rockwell was tryin' to keep the pot stirred, and White finally took 'im off the crime beat." Gornicki started to sprinkle tobacco in the center of his paper. Dinah Washington's crooning over the wireless was suddenly cut off.

"...rupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin. Police are currently engaged in a high speed chase out of the central business district, following presumed members of the Caglioni gang after a bank heist at First National on State Street. The chase seems to be heading toward North Bridge and - this just in. Superman has been sighted on the Interborough Bridge. I repeat -"

Angie appeared at my elbow and set down my drink. "Jones, normally I wouldn't say nothin' 'bout a man's drinkin', but don't you think this is a bit much before 10 am?"

I picked up the glass. "I'm fine, Angie." I was brusquer than I needed to be, trying to watch for Kent without being obvious.

"Yeah, lea' 'im be, Angie," Gornicki mumbled as he licked the edge of his rolling paper and sealed his cigarette.

"Your liver," Angie shrugged, taking away my empty. There was still no sign of Kent. Over the wireless, the newsman was reading updates as fast as they came in. I took another drink of whiskey, trying to keep the channels straight in my brain. It seemed like the background buzz of the bar was getting louder, harder to shut out.

"That Superman, helluva guy," Gornicki remarked. "Anyway, like I was sayin'-"

He paused to light his cigarette, and my attention was too split to react before the match flared to life. The fire seemed to burst into my brain, a starburst of pain in the middle of fractured thoughts. I rose unsteadily to my feet, trying to hold it together. "Hold that thought, Gornicki. Need to hit the head."

"You all right, Jones? Maybe Angie's right 'bout the booze-" He shook out his match, but I had already turned away to make my staggering way to the men's room.

Halfway there the echo of the fire was beginning to fade, and I felt myself steadying. I saw Angie looking at me with a worried expression, and I gave her a reassuring smile that didn't seem to work.

I slumped a little against the swinging door of the men's room as I opened it, noticing belatedly someone was already in the stall. I straightened up and went to the sink, splashing water on my face and staring at the bricks where a mirror might have been once. My brain was still overfull of voices, uncut by the alcohol buzz. I shook my head muzzily and took a staggering couple of steps to the urinal, unzipping my trousers. I heard the hinges squeak on the stall door and wondered who convinced Dom a men's room needed a stall door. Then there was a sharp pain in the back of my head and I was watching the porcelain lip of the urinal fly toward my face.

Another sharp crack, and then there was nothing at all.


	5. Chapter 5

The ground was far away and moving side to side like it was riding waves. Except boat decks didn't look like alleys, and even if they did, I didn't see how I could be moving forward when I couldn't see my feet. That, and the muttering I was beginning to hear was not the ocean.  
"Sumbitch is heavier than he looks."

"Looks like a boxer type. All that compact muscle. Think he's comin' around, too."

"Hit him again?"

In the pause for decision, the men who propped me up by the arms tried to shift my weight across their shoulders. I groaned and my head lolled to one side, free for the moment from the incessant swaying. I could feel someone's breath on my face for a second, an unfocused blur, and another shift under my arm.

"Nah, he'll be good. Won't you, boyo?"

I didn't reply, but Voice 2 didn't seem to need an answer. He started to move forward again, but Voice 1 stayed still. The jerk of my arms stretched across their shoulders jolted more awareness into me. "I dunno about this, Paulie."

Paulie gave a heavy sigh. "Look, asshole, order says not to rough him up too much. And he don't need to be hit again. Hotel security get one whiff of him, we pass him off as our buddy who just been on a bender. Doesn't matter what he says then."

"Heh. Yeah, he sure stinks. All right, then-" Voice 1 shifted, dropping his weight and straightening back up more securely under my arm.

"Good boy, Seamus." Now Paulie shifted, and I could feel both their arms across my back, supporting me. I didn't bother to try to get my feet under me. No sense making it easier for them, even if I was scuffing the hell out of my shoes as they dragged me from the dimness of the alley into the full day of the street.

I kept my head bowed but swung it to one side so I could place where I was. I wasn't in the heart of Midtown anymore, but rather on the east edge, where Park Front Avenue got its name. We were emerging onto a familiar sidewalk outside the Parkview Hotel. My "helpers" must have loaded me into a car, probably parked behind the Tap. Probably with permission. Meaning probably the look Angie gave me when she saw me heading for the men's room was not about how drunk she thought I was, but how beat up she thought I'd get.

I should have realized from the crazy clamor of the voices in my head. But it had been too long since I'd been anywhere where people's attention was so focused on me. All I'd heard was the overwhelming cacophony, too strong to deaden even with the aid of Jack Daniels.

We were under the awning of the hotel, and the bell captain stopped us. "Where you think you're taking him?"

I could feel the apologetic smile on Paulie's face. He was a little shorter than Seamus, causing me to list even more crazily between them, and he was also obviously sharper than his companion. "1502 sent us to round him up. Said he was an old buddy needed help crawling out of the bottle."

Something in the bell captain's demeanor changed, became more upright and nervous. I couldn't see his face past the brim of my hat, but I could hear it in his voice. "1502, you say? Take him on up then, but be quick about it."

"Much obliged," Paulie replied. "If you could just get the door for us..."

"Of course, of course. Just go."

I heard the scrape of the door, and the concrete beneath my feet gave way to the thick patterned carpet of the Parkview lobby. I groaned.

"Shut up, you," Seamus hissed, and I could feel him sweating where my weight rested against his body. It smelled of fear more than exertion.

I wanted to see who was up in the penthouse on fifteen who had so cordially arranged for my visit, but it was in my interest for my trip across the lobby to be remembered. I settled my weight lower, dragging my feet more heavily in the carpet, and swung my head like a bull in a ring.

"I mean it," Seamus threatened, hissing a word at me that got a disapproving glance from a woman sitting just close enough to hear. She wasn't the one I wanted to see me, however. My wild scan of the room had found exactly who I was looking for.

Gus Riordan, house detective of the Parkview, was standing by the concierge desk exchanging witticisms with someone seated on the other side of the counter. His eyes were scanning the lobby with casual alertness. I rolled my head against Seamus's shoulder, making my face visible from Gus's angle.

"Shut it, Seamus," Paulie growled, and from my new position, I could see his eyes darting around the lobby.

I felt Gus's shock of recognition when he saw me, although his expression didn't change. He laughed at something the other person said, moving casually away from the counter as if he was heading out to take care of some routine business. His stroll was moving him in our direction, and Paulie was stiffening.

I closed my eyes and groaned again, flopping as if I had passed out and managing to make myself easier to carry at the same time. With my eyes on the floor, I concentrated hard in Gus's direction. I didn't want him to stop us. I just wanted him to monitor, see where I went, think about checking in up in 1502 if I hadn't reappeared within a half-hour.

I couldn't see what happened, but I felt Paulie relax a little as we drew up to the elevators. "I don't like the way that house dick was lookin' at us," Seamus complained.

"He didn't stop us. And we're not doin' nothing wrong. Just helping this old guy's buddy."

I heard the ping of the elevator door, then the slide of it opening. The Parkview installed new elevators - state of the art - about three years back. They were the kind that didn't need attendants. Gus complained that guests got up to all sorts of nonsense since they installed them. I was thinking that me getting dragged across the city counted as some kind of nonsense, but from the hired goons doing the dragging, I was going to learn nothing. They pulled me into the elevator, and I felt Paulie shift to hit the button on the wall.

"He passed out again, Paulie. Think I hit him too hard?"

"Now you care about hittin' him too hard," Paulie snorted. "I think you should be happy he didn't piss himself when you put him down. Next time you wait 'til after a guy shakes himself off before you sap 'im at a urinal."

"Sorry, Paulie. I just - Eddie said he was slippery and-"

"Eddie's full of shit. Now shut up and let me do the talkin'," Paulie ordered, and I felt the elevator coming to a halt.

I should've figured Gornicki set me up.

The elevator doors opened onto a short hall with two doors. Paulie and Seamus re-settled me and hauled me to the one on the right. 1502. I'd been there before.

Paulie reached for the knocker, rapping out a combination of short and long taps. After a moment's pause, the door opened wide. "Bring him in."

The voice giving the order belonged to a boy, not older than his early teens. He was short enough I could see him from my slouch, and he could see my face. He was dark-haired and serious, and I saw him cataloging me, observing my face and my feigned unconsciousness. It was unnerving, the clinical study he made of me. His eyes were an icy blue, harder than a boy's that age should be.

He stood to one side as Paulie and Seamus took me through a short foyer to the main sitting room of the suite. A precise British voice said, "Set him there, if you please."

"Sure thing," Paulie agreed amiably, and a moment later I was slumped in a chair at a table. "John Jones, just like we promised."

"You'll remove his hat, please. And Mr. Jones, if you would lift your chin and cease your charade, I would appreciate it."

I felt my hat removed, and I obeyed the order to raise my face to stare sullenly at the owner of the British accent. He was a tidy man, not overly tall, but slim enough to appear taller than he was. He was wearing a black three piece suit and a freshly starched shirt. A thin grey mustache graced his upper lip, neatly trimmed. On the table in front of him, under a crisp linen napkin, I could see a circle of cold steel. "Yes, this is Mr. Jones," he stated, a note of satisfaction in his tone. "Dick, if you would be good enough to accompany these men to the lobby and see to their payment."

The boy who had opened the door for us - Dick, apparently - nodded, his jaw tightening in a hint of stubbornness before he said, "This way, please."

"Pleasure doing business with you, sir," Paulie said from behind me, and then he and Seamus were following the boy out.

"I'd think twice about sending a young boy off alone with those goons," I stated as soon as the door closed.

The British man smiled thinly and sipped from a tea cup that had been sitting beside the napkin. "Dick can look after himself," he stated. "I also would prefer he not be here for this."

"Is this where you tell me you had me dragged here so you could plug me yourself?"

"Please, Mr. Jones. If I had wanted you dead, you would have been buried two years ago along with the other poor souls in that warehouse." He watched me carefully for a moment, then unfurled a second napkin sitting on the table. He settled one hand on the still concealed gun. "I apologize for the incivility of this meeting." His free hand was opening the ice bucket and scooping ice cubes onto the just unfurled napkin. "I have conflicting intelligence about the kind of man you are." He folded the napkin over the ice and slid the bundle toward me.

I looked at it without picking it up. "You believe I was at the warehouse."

"Belief has nothing to do with it, Mr. Jones. And I note you don't ask which warehouse. Now do mind that knot on your forehead."

"Not many people in this town know my name and don't know which warehouse," I pointed out, still refusing the ice and letting my eyes drift around the room. "You haven't been here long."

The man inclined his head. "You are observant, Mr. Jones. And stubborn."

"You got any whiskey?"

"Ice for your drink, but not for your head. When Bruce said you were inhuman, I took him to mean something different."

I sat up straight in my chair, unable to contain my reaction. "What did you just say?"

The Brit smiled, but it was a sad kind of smile. "I have your attention. Good. Now if you can just tell me if I will need this-" he lifted the napkin from the gun, a .22 - "we can have a conversation."

I stared at him. "I'm an unarmed man hated by half the city of Metropolis, in the hotel room of a man able to afford a penthouse suite at the Parkview. How far do you think I'll get if I do anything to harm you?"

He frowned. "Quite far, actually. You'll have to do better than that, Mr. Jones."

I blinked numbly and picked up the ice on the table. I pressed it to the goose egg on my forehead, anchoring my mind against the cold and reaching out mentally. The Brit was a dangerous man, that I could tell. But he was also sad, disinclined to harm me unless I forced him to it.

"Why did you have those mooks take me down?"

He shrugged, his hand still on the little .22. "It seemed unlikely you would come willingly."

"You could have asked."

"And risked your disappearance back to Uptown."

I closed my eyes and concentrated. Hazy memories, deliberately buried two years ago, pushed against the rising swell of the voices in my head. I wanted a drink, but I suddenly knew what the old man wanted to hear. "That boy, Dick. He's his."

I heard the gun lifted from the table, but I could not look up to see if the Brit was pocketing it or aiming it. A part of me wanted it to be the latter. I really needed a drink. "He told you this?"

I pressed the ice harder to my forehead. It hurt, but it hurt less than the inside of my brain. "He told me about the circus."

I heard an odd intake of air from the Brit, but I still kept my eyes screwed shut. I could hear him moving now, across the room, some indistinct noises from the wet bar, and then he was at my side, setting a glass of Scotch in front of me. "As close as I have," he half-apologized.

I removed the makeshift icepack from my forehead and picked up the glass, looking at it gratefully before I took a big swallow. The liquor felt warm in my throat and my belly, and the voices began to settle back to the background. The Brit moved back to his side of the table and sat. When I looked at him, his eyes were hollows of regret and concern, and the gun was no longer in his hand.

He waited until I had taken a couple more swallows of the Scotch before he spoke. "Let me try to start this conversation in a more civilized manner." He met my eyes, and I know he saw an ache he knew. "My name," he introduced, "is Alfred Pennyworth."


	6. Chapter 6

A man who called himself Alfred Pennyworth sat across a table from me in the sitting room of one of the penthouse suites of the Parkview Hotel. Fifteen feet from where we sat, huge glass doors opened onto a rooftop patio with stunning park and city views. Neither of us were looking in that direction. We both knew the view already.  
Instead we watched one another warily. Pennyworth's face was composed, his expression cool save for his eyes. His eyes were sharp and alert and if I looked hard enough, I knew I would see things that would turn the din in my head into a howl. I looked down at the almost-empty glass of scotch instead.

He continued to study me.

"Shouldn't the boy be back by now?" I asked, as much to break the silence as from any real concern.

Pennyworth watched me swallow the last of the scotch, then rose and went back to the bar. "Dick is his own creature. I asked him to attend to certain affairs in the city if I succeeded in having you brought here. He is not happy about it, but he won't return until he knows you are gone." Pennyworth set the bottle of Glenlivet single-malt in the middle of the table and returned to his seat.

I poured myself another drink. "The boy's not old enough to shave."

"You said you knew about the circus," Pennyworth countered, and I didn't have anything I could say to that.

I set my glass down and looked again at the old Brit, seeing how this was going to go. Neither one of us wanted to talk about the one thing we had in common, neither one of us was certain how much the other knew, and we both had questions that wouldn't let us rest.

I decided to lay the first card on the table. "Canberra set the fire." To kill me, I didn't add.

Pennyworth became very still, and I could feel him processing this information, working in to the sketchy picture he had of what happened that night. Finally he nodded. "I suspected as much. He did not expect to die in it, though."

"No," I agreed, and I took another sip of scotch as the flames licked back into memory, evoking other flames from longer ago that seared even deeper. "There was the girl." Hortense Arroyo. The girl Harry Rockwell had a thing for. The girl who thought she had a thing for me. The girl who was the witness Canberra was trying to kill when a skylight shattered and everything changed. She was the only innocent in the whole sordid affair, and I was the one who managed to walk away. The scotch was burning in my throat as I swallowed more.

Now it was Pennyworth's turn. "He had been following your movements," he began, and I knew he meant Wayne, "trying to understand how your mind worked as you pieced things together. He was agitated when he called me that night, saying you would not see what Canberra was intending. He would not tell me where he was going or what he thought he could do about it."

The flames in my head were getting higher, and my fingers tightened on my glass. I forced them to relax, afraid I would break the glass, and the effort restored some focus to my mind. "You could not have stopped him," I pointed out unnecessarily.

"Did he tell you I raised him?"

"Shit," I swore, screwing my eyes shut and draining the scotch left in my glass. I made it flow through me faster, throwing a deadening cool over the echo of the word "Papa" and the wide eyes staring out of the flames. When I opened my eyes again, Pennyworth was still watching me.

"He refused to tell me much about you. I accused him of becoming obsessed." A dry, ironic chuckle escaped Pennyworth's still composed face.

"I asked him to keep my secret. In exchange for keeping his."

Pennyworth nodded. "He did," he said, and a part of me that I had not consciously considered sent relief through my system. It pushed the flames back more than the scotch could. "He even made me promise to leave you alone, whatever happened."

That got my attention - and gave me an emotion to further divert my attention from past failings. "So you have a couple of cheap goons bash my head and drag me back here? Nice way to keep a promise." I poured more scotch.

"I also promised to look out for Dick."

There was a layer of pain in Pennyworth's tone that I chose to ignore. "So you drag the kid to Metropolis on a witch hunt. Nice work." I raised my glass to him in mock toast.

I could feel the flare of Pennyworth's temper, and his voice grew cold. "Do not be fooled, Mr. Jones. He dragged me."

I snorted. "That boy?"

Pennyworth leaned close over the table, his words hissing dangerously. "That boy is on his third guardian in five years. Every adult he has loved and trusted has met a violent end. Don't question my struggle to save his soul."

Because you couldn't save Bruce, I thought to myself, but it wasn't Pennyworth I meant by the you. Still, I met his angry gaze steadily and sipped coolly at my scotch.

There was a rap at the door. Pennyworth glared at me for a moment more before he leaned back and composed his features. "Excuse me," he said politely, once again a vision of English civility. He rose and pulled his suit coat into order before heading to the foyer.

The rap came again, more impatiently, and I heard Gus Riordan's voice, muffled through the door. "Mr. Pennyworth? Everything okay there?"

I heard the door unlock and open, remembering belatedly my mental suggestion to Gus. I could take the opportunity, I realized, to declare our business finished, let Gus escort me back to the lobby. From the foyer, Pennyworth's voice drifted back. "Yes? Mr.... Riordan, was it? What can I do for you?"

I imagined the reassuring smile Gus was offering, the one that won him the ladies his sardonic grin couldn't catch. The hotel gig suited Gus. "Sorry to trouble you," he apologized before launching into a sincere-sounding lie. "I noticed the window washers left a line on the side of the building and I just wanted to check to make sure no one rigged your garden doors. Can't be too careful." As he spoke, I picked up the melting ice in the napkin and deposited both napkin and ice back in the ice bucket. I took the napkin that had covered Pennyworth's gun earlier and settled it over the puddle on the table.

"Rigged the doors?" Pennyworth asked.

"I'm sure no one did, but if I can just check-"

I could sense Pennyworth's reluctance and a hint of alarm about the line. A chill struck me as I considered how closely Gus's ruse might have inadvertently touched on a truth about the younger of 1502's present occupants that Pennyworth would want to remain hidden.

I gave the old man credit, though; Pennyworth's hesitation was so slight as to be unnoteworthy. "Of course," he said, and he led Gus into the sitting room.

Gus met my eyes as he cleared the foyer, but he gave no sign of recognition. "I'll be done in two shakes of a lamb's tale," he promised in my direction, heading for the doors leading to the rooftop garden. I watched him as he opened both doors, inspected the locks, closed them and then relocked them. "Well, better safe than sorry," he stated. "The doors are fine. Sorry to disturb you and your guest, Mr. Pennyworth."

"As you say, better err on the side of caution. I appreciate your alertness. Good day, Mr. Riordan."

"Have a good afternoon," Gus replied, and I gave him a half-wave of farewell that seemed to go as far as seeing me had to relieve his concern. He followed Pennyworth to the foyer, and I could hear him knocking on the door of 1501 before the sound was shut out.

Pennyworth emerged from the foyer and stood there, watching me narrowly. His expression was less suspicious than it was disconcerted.

I gestured him to the table. "The house dick's gone. Let's continue this and get it over with."

Pennyworth didn't move. "Your head," he said.

I reached my hand to my forehead, running my fingers over the now smooth, unmarked skin. I knew what he was looking at. "Yeah. Figured Riordan would ask about it if he saw. This was easier."

Pennyworth still remained where he was, his face greying a little. "You are - Bruce said inhuman - I thought -"

"Yeah," I said again, looking at the glass of scotch and turning it in my hands for a moment before drinking the last swallow. It tasted wrong somehow, and I pushed the glass away, suddenly not wanting more.

Pennyworth approached me warily, eyes still darting to the no-longer-there bruise. He sat slowly, reaching blindly for the bottle of scotch and sloshing some into his teacup. He took a restorative sip, and faint color returned to his cheeks. "You didn't kill Bruce, did you?" he asked bluntly, a measure of reserve suddenly falling away.

I shook my head. "No."

He digested that for a moment. "Dick thinks you had something to do with it."

"I gathered."

Pennyworth looked at me sharply. "Don't underestimate the boy. Bruce trained him."

"He's still a boy."

"We're here right now because his network in Metropolis tracked Lois Lane to your office."

That caught me short. "His network?"

Pennyworth's lips tightened for a moment under his trim mustache. "I caught him packing, ready to come here on his own and find you." He paused. "He's researched every scrap of data he could get about that night."

I thought back to the wild reporting that had followed in the days and weeks after the Daily Planet ran the banner headline, "Arson Fire Kills Billionaire!" "He thinks I was the shadowy figure."

"You were." There was no doubt in Pennyworth's tone.

I considered my empty glass, just in reach. But the voices were quieted, calmed by my necessary demonstration of what I was. I felt a cold focus of sobriety that I had not experienced since the last time I had spent time in Suite 1502 of the Parkview Hotel. "I was," I confirmed.

"The bundle you were supposedly carrying. The armor?"

I nodded, and Pennyworth sagged a little in relief. I tried fishing for more information, hoping the new spirit of openness between us might get an answer to one of my questions "Bruce wouldn't tell me why he was here, why he was so eager to keep Luthor from buying the Planet."

"Good investment," Pennyworth replied absently, a rote answer.

"Three bodies worth?" I hated myself for saying it, but I was not in the mood to accept the same answer Bruce had given me with a smile that promised he was telling only half a truth.

Pennyworth straightened forcefully, his eyes snapping and his lips pressing into a thin line. He glared at me, and I glared back. We kept ending up back in this standoff.

But Pennyworth gave this time, his mental processes telling him that I had a point, however crudely expressed, and I had given him more than he had given me. "Dick doesn't know," he offered as explanation. "Bruce didn't want him to know. That's why he left him home."

"Are you asking me to keep this from Dick?" I could not imagine it would be an issue, but I could promise if it would get me my answer.

Pennyworth didn't pay me any attention. "I don't know why he felt he had to protect him, or even really why it was so important to him, but..." He pursed his lips, thinking. Finally, he said something that was the last thing I expected to hear. "It had something to do with Clark Kent."


	7. Chapter 7

The midday sunlight was dazzling as I stumbled out of the Parkview Hotel. I blinked against the glare a few times, getting my bearings. Pennyworth had no further information on what Clark Kent had to do with the battle between Wayne and Luthor for ownership of the Daily Planet, and I had no desire to relive that time in conversation. At least, not with Pennyworth.  
"Shoeshine, Mister?" a voice asked, and I looked down at a young black face.

"Hey, kid! I told you-" the bell captain started, moving toward us.

I managed not to bristle too obviously, turning my back and putting myself between the belligerent bell captain and the kid. "Let's go," I muttered, following him as he led me half-way down the block.

I was startled when the kid pulled up short. "You really need a shoeshine, Mister."

I glanced back toward the Parkview Hotel, but the bell captain had returned to his place under the awning, and the cut stone building at our backs was the Liberty Tower. "You're taking a chance working down here, aren't you kid?" I asked, not unkindly.

The kid shrugged, already setting his box on the ground. "This is my turf," he stated, gesturing toward the misplaced office monolith. "Mr. Gus tells me to look out for a guy with shoes scuffed to heck, and if that ain't you, I don't know who is. I didn't want you walking off the wrong way."

I considered the boy more seriously as he tugged my pants leg, getting me to set my left foot on the shoe shine box. He knew what he was doing, and not just in terms of a shoe shine. I wondered how long he had been delivering messages for Gus. Less than two years, I knew for certain.

He whipped out his polish and a rag. He knew how to deliver a message without drawing attention, and he was also right about my shoes - they looked like shit.

"What's your name, kid?"

"Roosevelt," he replied, spreading the polish over the trashed toe of my shoe. "Folks mostly call me Rosie."

"That so? And what else did Mr. Gus tell you?" I let my eyes wander along the street, taking in the tourists heading off on carriage rides into the park.

Rosie's polish went into one of his baggy pants pockets and he whipped his rag from his belt loop with a sharp snap. He began buffing my left shoe. "He said you'd ask my name. Also said to ask you who you favored in the third race."

I glanced down fleetingly. "Always go for the long legs," I remarked by rote, finishing a joke I hoped the kid wouldn't get. "And Mr. Gus is a bad influence on you."

The kid looked up at me with a wide grin that sparkled in his eyes, and yes, he knew the joke. "Mr. Gus said you say that, too. Other shoe, Mister."

"Sounds like Gus is giving away all my lines," I muttered as I lifted my right foot onto the shoe shine box.

"Not that one," the kid replied saucily, "although he did say I should ask you for another quarter."

I raised an eyebrow. "Did he, now?"

"Yassuh," Rosie replied, irony in his dialect. Whip smart brat, but I could see why Gus had picked him as a message boy. There was another snap of the rag coming out of the belt loop, and Rosie began buffing again. "Mr. Gus said you could do with solid food. Said he was buying, even, and you'd know where."

"Gus is buying, I could probably give you two extra quarters," I commented to the air, once more maintaining the appearance of a guy just getting a shoe shine.

Rosie gave a final crack of his rag as he finished buffing my shoe. "More than one look suspicious. That's a dime, Mister." He held out his hand, and I fished into my pocket for the dime and an extra quarter. "Should prolly flip me the quarter, Mister," Rosie suggested, and I kept an appreciative smirk off my face. I dropped the dime in Rosie's palm.

He thanked me and swiftly repacked his shoe shine box before moving off. I let him get two steps before pantomiming a moment's decision and a second reach into my pants pocket. "Hey, kid!" I yelled.

Rosie turned, his face appropriately apprehensive. I smiled and flipped a quarter through the air toward him. A huge smile lit his face as he caught it. "Thanks, Mister!" he called, and before he'd gone two more steps, he had another customer.

I shook my head as I turned my feet toward Adams Street. Kid was a consummate showman, too clever by half, probably, but gutsy enough to make the most of being that clever without getting burned.

The city was glittering bright as I walked, even the green of the park not enough to cut the glare of the concrete. This part of town was cleaner than most, kept that way for the tourists and their money. I pulled my hat brim a little lower trying to shield my eyes, but it was hardly any good when the light bounced off everything.

When I crossed Harding Street, the canyons of Midtown replaced the open feeling created by the park and cut the light with sharp shadows. The lunch crowd still filled the sidewalks, but it had the briskness of people returning to their offices after lingering one drink too long over their meals. Human traffic collected at corners, deciding whether to risk a dart across the steady stream of speeding taxis or wait for the light. Laughing gaggles of secretaries split up at intersections to mingle with more somber businessmen in dark suits. Silences fell as groups filed into office buildings.

I stayed to one edge of the sidewalk, moving with the flow of foot traffic, blending in with the crowd. No one paid me any more attention than anyone else as I turned south on Adams. I was alert for any sign that I might be followed, mindful of Pennyworth's explanation of how he'd found me earlier, but not so much of a whisper of recognition from the crowd caught my mind.

Two blocks down on Adams, I stopped in front of the Was-Ed's Diner and went in.

Gus was sitting at a booth against the back wall in front of two cups of coffee. He had on one of his usual natty brown suits, unrumpled even after an overnight shift. His hat was hooked on the coat hook on the edge of the booth. His dark brown hair was cut a little shorter than the fashion of the day - a remnant of his army days - and aside from a few greys, it looked the same as it always had. I slid into the side of the booth across from him and claimed one of the coffee cups. "Hiya, Gus."

"I didn't figure the old man would keep you much longer when you weren't down at the end of my shift. Take it Rosie found you?"

"And shined my shoes. And told me you're buying." I sipped at the coffee. It was still scalding hot.

Gus was watching me steadily. "I am," he confirmed. "You look like shit, John."

I slurped a little more coffee, wincing a little as it burned at the back of my throat. "That makes one of us," I shot back.

Gus snorted and reached for the sugar, pouring in what had to be three spoons worth with a lack of attention that came from long practice. I never did understand how Gus could drink it that sweet. "I don't think the liquid diet is doing so good for you," he commented.

"Helps me sleep at night, at least."

"Also gets you sapped and dragged to hotel rooms against your will."

I set down my coffee hard and stared at Gus. He was unconcerned by my scrutiny. He just tapped his spoon on the edge of his cup and set it to the side before picking up his coffee and drinking a swallow. "You think I was there against my will," I said flatly.

Gus nodded toward me. "Take off your hat and stay a while, John. And you disappear for two years and you honestly think I'm going to believe the Parkview Hotel is the first place you'd want to be when you resurface?"

I glared at Gus until I was surprised by a waitress walking up and depositing two plates of creamed chipped beef on toast on our table. "There be anything else for you boys?" she asked, a hint of distracted boredom in her tone.

"That'll be all, Gladys. Thanks," Gus replied to Gladys's already retreating back. "Eat up, John."

I gritted my teeth, then sighed. I'd never been able to stay angry with Gus. I took off my hat and set it on the table by the wall, then drew one of the plates closer. I slipped the silverware out of its napkin cocoon and then unrolled the napkin to lay across my lap. "How's Lorna?" I asked.

Gus swallowed the mouthful he'd been chewing and chased it with some coffee. "Good," he finally answered. "Got her set up in a sweet little bungalow over in Vernon."

I lowered my fork and stared at him. "You what?"

"We got hitched. Year and a half ago, now. Lorna got spooked with what happened to Hortense, and she got me to thinking how you never know in this life. One day you wake up and then you're dead." Gus was using the philosophical tone he always used when he discussed things that everyone would rather forget. That was one of the things about Gus - he never avoided topics, but he never made you feel like you had to comment, either. He just let it slide through the conversation. As I listened to him, I felt a bottle-shaped ache that I had used to fill the space Gus used to be able to bridge with talking.

"So one day, we up and said the hell with it. I promised Lorna I'd give up other women, and she gave up the club for the women's rotary." A half-smile quirked into Gus's cheek, and he shifted in the booth, reaching into his jacket pocket and coming out with his wallet. "And then there's this." He fished out a photograph and gazed at it for a moment before passing it to me.

I wiped my hands carefully on my napkin before accepting the last thing I expected to ever see from Gus Riordan. I looked up at him with a shocked expression, and he laughed. "Still can surprise you, eh, John." He took a swallow of coffee. "That's our little one. Betsy."

I studied the photograph. The baby in the picture was maybe six months old, big enough to sit up. She had on a frilly dress and someone had managed to get a bow to stick to a few wispy strands on a mostly bald head. Unlike most babies in photos, she was smiling. She had Lorna's eyes, but that smile? "Definitely a Riordan, with that grin," I stated, handing the photo back. "You named her Betsy?" I was asking to make conversation, to save myself from thinking about what it meant to have a daughter.

"Short for Elizabeth," Gus confirmed, taking the picture and tucking it back into his wallet as he fixed his eyes on me. "Elizabeth Joan," he added significantly. "We told the priest we named her for Joan of Arc. Think you can go to hell for lying to a priest?"

I should've joked back that Gus probably already had his ticket stamped, but instead I blinked and dove for my coffee cup, swallowing down a lump suddenly in my throat. I couldn't make myself look at Gus.

"We've missed you, John," he said quietly, putting his wallet back in his jacket. "I don't blame you. Hell, if the same shit'd happened to me, I'd probably have gone to ground in Uptown, too. Might've even crawled into a bottle and never come out." He paused, turning his coffee cup. Then he caught my eyes again. "Why'd you come out, John?"

I couldn't have answered in that moment if I'd wanted to, but I was saved by Gladys, coming by on coffee rounds to refill our cups. We sat in silence as she poured and moved on.

I drank some coffee. Then I said, "Sometimes a man's got a price."

Gus shook his head. "The only price you ever had, John, was caring too much. And you can bet I'm not letting you disappear back into your hole again if I can help it. You on a case?"

I nodded.

"Figured as much. Planet, again, isn't it?"

I nodded again.

Gus swore softly under his breath. "You gotta make me a promise, John."

"I can't keep promises, Gus."

"Bullshit," Gus contradicted me. "You'll keep this one. You'll keep this one because you've got a price, and I'm naming it. Since her grandpappy had a stroke, my Betsy's short a godparent."

I choked a little. "Gus-" "I'm not playing around, John. We worked together for almost ten years. You're probably the only decent guy I can stand in all Metropolis. I bite the big one, I want someone around who can tell my kid about the guy I really was."

"Gus-"

"So you survive this case you're on, we'll talk about this. And some other things. Promise me."

"Other things?"

"Like getting Rosie to quit shining shoes and go to school."

"Gus-"

"I'm not saying say yes. Just promise we'll talk about it."

I relaxed a little. "I promise we'll talk about it," I agreed, and Gus leaned back with a grin.

"Good. Now, tell me about this case." He resumed his assault on his half finished chipped beef.

"I'm not getting you mixed up in it, Gus."

"Of course not," he agreed amiably between bites. "You're just going to ask me for info. Who're you tailing at the Planet?"

I took a bite of my own cooled food. "Nobody at the moment. I'm here."

"Don't crack wise," Gus warned. "Also, remember who introduced you to Lois Lane in the first place. It's likely I know something you want to know."

I considered. He had a point. "Clark Kent," I said.

Gus stopped eating, his fork halfway to his mouth. "You're shitting me."

"I know. Guy's squeaky clean. Worst you might say of him is he's a bit yellow. But -"

"Don't be so sure," Gus said thoughtfully.

"Gus?"

"I caught him once," Gus mused, "coming out of a janitor's closet at the Parkview."

I blinked. "He boffing one of the maids?"

Gus shook his head slowly. "Wasn't anyone else in there. And he seemed surprised to see me there. Confused. Said he thought it was the stairwell entrance."

"He's not that dense."

"No," Gus agreed. He made a face as he drank a bit more coffee, and I suspected it had gone cold. He had waved away Gladys's last round with the coffee pot. "No. He was disarrayed. Didn't even have his glasses on. Had to fumble for them."

I snorted. "Bet he was caught an eyeful of someone getting down and dirty peeping through a keyhole and had to take care of things."

"Maybe." Gus didn't seem convinced. "You ever seen Kent without his glasses?"

I shook my head. "What's that got to do with anything?"

Gus lined his silverware up on his empty plate and dropped his napkin on top of everything. "I don't know. Just a weird feeling I've seen him somewhere before, and not as Clark Kent, if you know what I mean."

"A double life?"

"Maybe."

Gladys came by again, taking Gus's plate away and refilling our coffee. I worked a little more on the remains of my chipped beef as Gus poured sugar in his coffee and stirred it. I tried to imagine Kent without his glasses.

"Need a ride back to the Planet?"

"No," I declined, deciding I was done with my plate and pushing it away. "Probably better not to be seen with me down there."

"Point." Gus sipped his coffee. "You'll remember your promise."

"To talk."

"To talk."

I nodded, and the voices that had managed to be quiet for over an hour began to increase their noise from whispering. "I'll remember," I said, mentally ordering the voices to shush. "I'll call at the Parkview."

"I'll be waiting for it."

We lapsed into silence and finished our coffee.


	8. Chapter 8

I didn't go back to the Planet. Instead I caught the subway south four stops and emerged at the Metropolis Public Library. The archive at the Daily Planet might serve me better in some ways, but given my reception in the neighborhood, I suspected my odds of getting into the building were close to nil. There were no such problems at the library.  
It'd been too long since I'd been to the main branch of the library. I'd forgotten the way the trees on the grounds created a comforting expanse of green. They were not quite in full leaf this time of year, and they let the sun through pleasantly. There were readers scattered on the lawn around the sprawling library building. A few late lunch types had taken up residence on the broad stairs going up to the library entrance. On either side of those stairs, sleek griffins with modernist lines glared at one another, their stone surfaces dappled with sunlight and shadow. One had its mouth open in what might have been a scream of defiance. There had been some flap when the griffins were dedicated about their appropriateness to a library. Now Metropolitans identified fondly with one or the other, claiming the screamer was the voice of rebellion made possible by knowledge, and his disapproving fellow was the virtue of a rule that told the screamer to shut up and let people read.

I went up the steps along the side guarded by the close-mouthed griffin. I patted one stone flank as I went by. "I hear you, buddy," I remarked, and one of the late lunchers a few steps up and about eight feet over glanced up from her book and gave me a quick smile. I smiled back and kept going.

The library was cool and dark inside. The atmosphere was one of hushed activity, because the Metropolis Public Library was never truly quiet. At least, not on the level of mental energy. The intensity of the place was palpable, and somehow soothing. I let it wash over me as I made my way across marble floors and past the open reading room to the special collections desk.

A fussy looking man with thinning hair combed over a developing bald spot looked up at my approach. He was wearing a bow tie with his close cut suit, and his mouth had a hint of a perpetual scowl that seemed to dare a man to comment on his out of date threads. Light brown eyes regarded me from behind a pair of small wire-rimmed glasses. "Can I help you?" he asked, his tone pleasant enough, if a bit supercilious. He seemed to be actively resisting an urge to look me up and down.

"I wanted to look at the Superman collection," I told him, taking out my wallet and presenting my library card with a winning smile.

He took the card and settled it on the log book in front of him, dragging its edge down the page until he came to the next empty line. "Mr. Jones, is it?" he asked without looking up. I picked up the air of a casual test in his tone. I wondered how many people had been caught giving other people's cards when they automatically answered his name question. Not the hardened liars, of course, but if a person wasn't used to replying to a name, he'd usually give it away.

"Yeah," I confirmed, watching him write down my name and library card number. He glanced at a wall clock to the side of his desk and noted the time.

He handed my card back to me, already dismissing me from his thoughts. "Down the hall to the right. Third door down. Says Superman Archive on the door. Iris will help you."

"Much obliged," I replied, returning my wallet to my pocket but keeping my card out. I suspected Iris would want to see it, too, and probably to hold it while I looked at the papers.

I found the door just like the man said and entered through it to a narrow room that stretched back further than a person might expect. The first third of the room was taken up by a reading area with two large wooden tables. A counter with a swing up door cut the reading area from the archive proper, a space filled with horizontal and vertical file cabinets as well as actual stacks. A pretty brunette - Iris, I assumed - behind the counter was the only person in the room. She looked up as I entered.

"Hello," she greeted.

"Hello," I replied, crossing the reading area and presenting her with my card. "You must be Iris."

She smiled and glanced at my card. "And you must be John." She had the indulgent smile of a woman who expected to be flirted with and would never let a flirtation go further than she wanted.

"Guilty as charged," I confessed, playing into her expectation. "You've caught me."

She nodded, bringing her hands up under her chin and leaning on her elbows. The gesture served to draw attention to the diamond on her left hand. It was a relatively demur ring in terms of size, but the clarity of the stone was stunning. It offset the purr of her tone. "And now that I've caught you, Mr. Jones, what is it I can do to help you?"

I gave her an appreciative message-received smile and got down to business. "I need to take a look at the earliest reports on Superman," I told her.

"Need, eh?" She took my measure with her eyes as she rose. "You a cop or a dick?"

"What makes you ask that?"

She answered me over her shoulder as she opened a drawer in one of the horizontal files. "Most folks would like to look at archives, Mr. Jones. The ones that need to see are reporters, professors, lawyers, cops and private eyes." She lifted a bound newspaper file from the file cabinet. "You aren't dressed well enough to be a lawyer, and you don't smell like printer's ink." She set the newspaper file on the counter between us.

"I could still be a professor."

She gave me a look that implied I had insulted her intelligence. "Most professors don't use their heads to stop other people's fists. Judging from the nose, I'm guessing that's what you've been doing with yours."

I inclined my head in acknowledgment of her point. "You're a sharp one, Iris."

"Not all librarians are just about the books, Mr. Jones. And you haven't answered my question."

"Oh, let me keep one mystery, Miss-"

"West," she supplied, her blue eyes implying I'd answered her question. "Here's your early reports." She slid them closer to me. "Bring them back when you're done and I'll give you back your card. Unless you need more, of course."

"Of course," I agreed, picking up the bound file. "Thank you, Miss West."

"My pleasure, Mr. Jones," she replied, watching me as I took the file to one of the reading tables. I felt her eyes finally leave me when I sat down.

The advantage of the library's Superman archive was that it was complete and thorough about all things Superman. The disadvantage was its singular focus. I could already see the file in front of me was clippings. They would be fully referenced clippings, this being a library, but there were things to be said for having the full paper an article came from. Sometimes context would give more clues than the article itself could.

I reached into my jacket pocket for the short pencil and small notebook I kept there. Then I opened the file Iris West had given me.

Maybe context wouldn't be such a problem.

The first headline surprised me; it was from a supermarket tabloid. It screamed in war headline font, "Mysterious Stranger Rescues Marston Baby!"

I don't know why I didn't remember Superman as part of the summer of the Marston baby case. Maybe because that was still before Lois Lane had given the Superman moniker to the "mysterious stranger." Maybe because there was so much in the world to think about beyond the headlines. Or maybe because, like everyone else, I didn't believe anything that appeared in the pages of the Metropolis Whisper. I wondered how the library had decided it was a real reference to the Man of Steel.

The Marston baby. I closed my eyes, feeling the power of memory overcoming me in a wave of too familiar voices. Normally that would be my cue to reach for a drink, but I steeled myself, letting my mind fall back among the images of the past. For a split second, I once more faced a wall of flames, but then they seemed to part, to fall away, and I was back four years ago.

It had been a week since the Marston baby disappearance, but that was just backdrop to the whirl of life as I knew it. It was the first time we had ever gone to the Element Club, me and Gus and Lois. It was an occasion, a celebration of having made it. Gus and I were flush for the first time since Prohibition had ended eighteen months earlier and we both left the Pinkertons. He was finally firmly settled in at the Parkview, and in part because of the business he had been referring my way, my Midtown office was flourishing. I had gotten a reputation as tough guy for the rich, and whenever a peccadillo needed discreet handling, I was the man who got the call. Gus was the hotel detective who could do no wrong, and the Peregrine Hotel downtown was trying to woo him away from the Parkview.

And then there was Lois. She'd been running with Gus for about eight months at that point, and that was part of the reason the Peregrine had no chance of adding Riordan to its payroll. The Parkview was closer to the Planet for those days when Lois could get away for a lunch time quickie. They weren't in love, not really, but neither was in a hurry to end a good thing.

Lois drove that night, pulling up in front of my apartment building and laying on the horn. I had barely gotten into the back of her Buick coupe when she had the V8 fired up and roaring away from the curb. She looked at me in the rearview mirror. "Looking sharp, Jones," she approved.

Gus was twisting around to grin at me from the front passenger seat. "Told you he could clean up okay," he said to Lois. I was trying not to squirm inside the new sharkskin suit Gus had insisted I buy. Gus could pull off worldly charm. I was just a gumshoe.

"More than okay," Lois decided. "Hell, any of your little old ladies see you at this club, they won't even know it's you."

"Great," I shot back. "This is going to cost me my livelihood, Gus."

Gus snorted. "None of John's little old ladies would be caught dead in this place. And John gets caught here, they'll figure he's on a case and trying to blend in. Add to his appeal."

"I thought my appeal is that I look like I wouldn't hang out the places you go, Gus."

"Are we done talking about Jones's so-called appeal yet?" Lois asked, stabbing the transmission into fourth gear and opening up the engine to highway speeds.

"Sorry, Sweets. We can go back to talking about you."

That earned Gus a glare. "Don't call me Sweets," Lois snapped. "And for the record, Jones, on the way over, you know it wasn't me dominating the conversation."

Gus rolled his eyes. "Yeah, sure, Lois. I was the one pissing and moaning about Perry White."

"He took a story away from me! Said it wouldn't look good, leaving a woman on the case."

"Here she goes again," Gus muttered.

"What story?" I asked, not wanting to be in the middle if there was a blowup.

"The Marston kid," Gus answered. "It's Lois's beat, the whole celebrity thing, you know."

I knew. That was how she and Gus had met in the first place. He caught her sneaking around the Parkview after a story and set her out on her ear. She came back. He liked her spunk. She got her story, and Gus managed to keep her from putting the worst bits in the paper. Even after she and Gus split, Lois credited him for making her see the difference between prurient and newsworthy.

In that moment, though, speeding out toward the Element Club, Lois was steamed. "Celebrity or not, I finally get a story that I can show how I can handle tougher news, and he gives it to some damned rookie!"

"What rookie?" I had asked, and Gus had rolled his eyes again. I could still hear him through the years:

"Don't get her started..."

And then Lois had answered my question.

My eyes snapped open at a sudden recollection. Clark Kent. She had been steamed because Perry had taken her story and given it to this reporter not two weeks in from Smallville, Kansas. A week later, the Marston baby was rescued by a mysterious stranger wearing - according to the article - a blue union suit.

Superman.

I looked again at the Metropolis Whisper. No one else had reported on the mysterious stranger, but what cop was going to report on some guy who showed up and blocked bullets? It was only months later that credible news sources were picking up stories of Superman sightings.

But Clark Kent had been on the Marston story until Superman showed up, and after. He had arrived in Metropolis three weeks before Superman's appearance, only a week before the Marston kidnapping. And Lane said that he was never on hand for Superman's appearances - ever. It was no wonder she was suspicious. The real question was why she hadn't been suspicious earlier.

Of course, I knew that answer, too. Lorna had been singing at the Element Club that night, and later we'd all realize that that was the beginning of the end for Gus and Lois. It was a summer of fights and love and general dissipation, and our personal dramas eclipsed pretty much everything else. By the fall, Gus and Lois were done save for one ill-considered night after the Planet ran her exclusive on "Superman." And once Superman had become her bread and butter? I was betting Lois had been happy enough that Kent was giving the stories wide berth.

I sighed, flipping through the pages to Lois's Superman headline, staring at it unseeingly. I'd read it often enough when it came out.

There was a connection of some sort between Clark Kent and Superman, that was clear enough. It was a connection it had somehow taken Lois Lane four years to realize, but which had prompted Bruce Wayne ...

I took a hissing breath, unprepared for the sudden blaze in my mind at the thought of Bruce's name. I could feel the sweat beading on my forehead as I clenched my fists, listening to Canberra screaming, feeling the wet stickiness of Hortense's blood under my body, and hearing Bruce Wayne's hitching whisper as he spoke to me through the cloak he had thrown over my body. And through it all, I heard a child's voice crying "Papa."

"Mr. Jones? Mr. Jones, are you all right?"

I opened my eyes, uncertain when I had closed them, and blinked at the concerned expression on Iris West's face. She was resting a hand on my arm and giving me a gentle shake.

"You just went pale all of a sudden, like you were going to pass out."

I patted her hand reassuringly and she drew it away. "Just a spell," I explained. "I get them sometimes."

She looked at me with concern. "Do you need a doctor? I can call-"

"No, no," I reassured her, making my voice sound stronger than I felt. "It's passed now. I'll be fine in a minute."

She frowned at me a little like she didn't believe me. I didn't believe me either.


	9. Chapter 9

It was dusk when I finally exited the library. I felt light-headed and shaky, but I managed to look steady on my feet as I started down the stairs. The streets had more-or-less emptied of the daytime business crowd, the intense focus of work replaced by people seeking entertainments. It changed the atmosphere, and waves of diffuse human thought lapped up toward me on the library steps.  
I paused half-way down, struggling with the clamor. I hitched my hip onto the handrail protruding from the concrete wall beside the stairs and squinted west at the lingering colors of sunset. My hand slipped into my jacket to find my flask.

I stopped myself. I had not had a drink in six hours. For the first time in two years, my system was empty of alcohol. For the first time in two years, I let the voices in my head speak unhindered.

They didn't sound like fire. Not the way they had.

I heard the clank and grind of a zippo snapping open at the top of the stairs and long schooled instincts turned my face away. A second later, the scent of cigarette smoke curled down to where I sat. I felt myself getting noticed, and steps tracked toward me.

"Pretty night, isn't it?" a voice asked at my elbow.

I glanced over at Iris West. She was leaning against the handrail beside me. "Yes," I agreed, watching her drag smoke into her lungs and then lower her cigarette hand to her side.

She turned her head to blow smoke away from me, then looked at me curiously. "Do you mind if I ask you something?"

"You can ask."

She smirked. "Yeah, I figured you'd say that." She took another drag of her cigarette, and I could hear her thinking, realized suddenly that she knew who I was, that she remembered the stories and rumors of two years ago.

A sense of dread curled in me. "What did you want to know?"

She was silent for another moment. There was uncertainty in her, a carefulness of phrasing waiting to be voiced. Finally she said, "When things go south like they did for you, when it's all that bad, what can the people who love you do?"

I was startled, catching a mental image of a blond man and a scent of intent behind her question that had nothing to do with me. She wasn't looking at me, and I watched the horizon with her. I answered honestly. "I don't know."

She nodded, still not looking at me. The thumb of her left hand was running over the back of her ring, and I knew he hadn't been able to answer her either. She crossed her arms under her breasts, bending her elbow to take another puff of her cigarette. She dropped the butt and stepped on it. "Evening star," she pointed out, nodding toward the horizon. "You should make a wish."

I shook my head. "I don't believe in wishes."

Iris West stepped back, settling her purse more firmly on her shoulder and looking at me. "Probably for the best," she decided. "It's not a star anyway. It's a planet." She tossed her dark hair and turned to go. "Good luck, Mr. Jones," she said. "I hope you find what you're looking for."

I didn't watch her go. Instead, I stared at the reddish evening star for what felt like a long time. When I finally turned to head for the subway, it was full dark.

The ride back to Uptown took a little over an hour, and I passed it lost in my own thoughts. It was an old feeling, to think in the now and know it was my own thinking. I thought I had forgotten how to do it, how to keep the stream of myself free of the other noise in my head.

Clark Kent began working at the Daily Planet less than a month before the tabloids first reported the heroics of a "mysterious stranger." Something about that had something to do with why Bruce Wayne had engaged in his bidding war with Lex Luthor for the ownership of the Daily Planet.

Lois Lane said Clark Kent always disappeared shortly before Superman made an appearance.

If Clark Kent was in league with Superman, setting up heists to make Superman look good, what could the motive be? The Metropolis police had learned to depend on Superman; could it have something to do with weakening the city's infrastructure? For providing cover for other heists, never to be solved?

Another thought struck me, made me grip the subway strap with white-knuckles. Did any of this explain why Superman had never appeared the night of the fire?

I forced my mind away from that speculation, recognizing I had more questions than answers and certainly not enough to form conclusions. I was almost calm when I stepped out of the train onto the Cotton Street el platform in Uptown.

The stairs from the platform let me down onto Cotton Street, and I made my way toward my office under the trestles, the sound of the departing train vibrating through the old steel. It was an ill-advised habit, and I felt predatory eyes on me. One shadow made an aborted move in my direction, pulling back when the light from an apartment window fell briefly on my face.

I was as bad a kind of luck in Uptown as I was in Midtown, but the residents here knew better than to touch a pariah.

At length I reached the narrow one-way of Ascot Drive, barely wide enough for a single lane of traffic. The only working street light was at the other end of the block, and the bulb over the scarred door at the front of my office building was shattered. It didn't matter to me; I didn't need light to find my key and let myself in.

The stairway was darker than the street outside, and I let my fingers trail along the crumbling plaster of the wall as I climbed. Glass crunched under my shoes on the second landing, but light filtered down from the third floor by that point. I paused, hearing the soft hum of a radio from somewhere on the second floor. I wasn't the only person who slept in my office in this part of town.

The fourth floor was silent when I opened the door out of the stairway and into the hall. The wall sconces on this level were still intact, although still inadequate as lighting went. Three of the four were lit, leaving wide pools of shadow between them. The threadbare carpet looked better in the shadow, and I suspected its riotous colors had never looked good, even when it was new.

I stopped in front of my office at the end of the hall, once more reaching into my pocket for my keys. There wasn't so much a sound as a flutter against my mind, and I made a show of fumbling for my keys. I cocked my head to one side, leaning drunkenly on the door frame as I concentrated. I had a harder time than I had to with the lock, and when I finally crossed my own threshold, I didn't bother to turn on a light.

I closed the door softly behind me and stood in front of the pebbled glass panel, letting the light from the hall silhouette me. My eyes were fixed on the windows behind my couch, left open to catch whatever breeze might find its way along the el tracks between my building and the one across the way. "Come in, little bird," I whispered.

A few minutes ticked by, long enough that another man would have doubted himself and decided he was imagining things. I stayed where I was, waiting.

Another couple of minutes, and I could feel the indecision on the other side of the wall. Flee or confront? Both impulses were undercut by a sense of youth. I still waited.

There was barely a whisper on the air when he finally slid in through the window, lithe and clad in dark colors. He stepped away from the silhouetting window into the deeper shadows beside the couch, and I could sense he was faintly unnerved that my eyes followed him unerringly.

We stared at each other for a little while, until I said, "I'm just going to sit there at my desk, if you don't mind. Feel free to continue glaring at me." I crossed easily to my chair, settling into it and angling the chair to face him. He had shifted a little, keeping me firmly in sight.

"I'd offer you a drink, but I don't think the old man would like it, and I've just quit," I said conversationally, my mind open to his reaction. It was a mix of surprise, concern, and anger. He still didn't say anything.

"All right, then," I stated, "I'll just go on about my business." I began emptying my pockets onto the desk. I felt him stiffen when I opened a drawer, and I raised my flask toward him. "Just putting this away," I reassured, "since I've quit."

He didn't relax, but he didn't speak either. If I were not so aware of the tangle of his thoughts, I could almost forget he was there. I opted to make a show of ignoring him for the moment, sorting through the day's receipts and looking through my little notebook using what light filtered in from the hallway and the street. I raised my head only at the warning rumble through the building of the approaching el train.

His youth and relative lack of experience betrayed him in that moment. The glare of the train's headlamp and the strobing light thrown by the sparks arcing from the wheels brightened my office dramatically, and he was a touch too slow in retreating with the shadows. I got a split second study of him, dressed in a skin-tight body suit of black and blue, a stylized domino mask across his eyes. As the building shook, I felt myself caught up in the long repressed memories of a dead man, memories of this same boy, years earlier, smiling and bright.

I gave up ignoring the boy. I waited until the train passed, then said, "He didn't put you in those colors."

"He's dead." The words were spat, unexpected, from the shadows, tapestry-thick with interwoven and conflicting emotions.

I picked the wrong night to stop drinking. I wanted something to do with my hands. I leaned back in my chair and tipped my hat back. "Yes," I agreed, keeping my voice even, "he is. But not in your mind."

I could feel the scowl radiating at me from the shadows.

"Well," I finally said, "as much fun as this has been-" I leaned forward to pick up the receiver of the phone on my desk. I caught a flash out of the corner of my eye and withdrew my hand as a *thunk* sounded behind me. It was followed by the pebbly rattle of plaster shaking loose inside the wall and trickling down behind the lathing. I glanced back to see the shuriken embedded in the wall at the precise level my wrist had been. "That's not very neighborly," I remarked.

His tense readiness was palpable. "What are you?" he hissed.

"I am what I am," I said wearily. "Are you going to leave now, or are you going to let me call the old man to come and get you?"

"I have questions."

"You have bad manners. You've had plenty of time to ask, and instead you try to maim me."

"Not maim," he defended almost automatically.

I glanced back at the shuriken.

"It wouldn't maim," he maintained. "Not unless I wanted it to."

He was still in the shadows, trying to wear an air of quiet menace that I could tell often succeeded. "You do want to hurt me," I pointed out.

He didn't answer. His emotions curled through the room, seeping out against his effort at tight control.

"If he were here now, he would send you home," I began quietly. "You would be angry, but you would obey. He would lecture you later about staying cool headed, whether in a fight or an interrogation or a stake out. You won't listen to me, so I won't try the same lecture."

"You killed him."

My own sense of guilt surged, and an echo of smoke curled through my mind. I fought the reaction, focusing on the shadow the boy occupied and tasting his emotion on the air. "Under different circumstances, I might agree with you. But you know better."

"You know who did."

I shook my head. "I know what happened. That's not the same."

"You lied about it."

I stared hard into the shadow, for the first time really challenging the angry youth hiding there. "Do you really believe the truth was an option?"

The room felt suddenly airless as this question entered the boy's consciousness. I readied myself for his rage and considered the possibility that he would flee. I was almost relieved at the choked voice that finally emerged from the silence. "He made me stay home."

I nodded a little, giving him space to continue to talking.

He didn't take it.

"It wouldn't have mattered," I finally said, the words falling heavily between us.

"You can't know that." There was an undercurrent in his tone of a head that knew I was right and a heart that was too invested in anger and guilt to believe me.

"I was there," I reminded him. The flames were already licking at the edges of my mind, flaring up from memory. I could see Hortense, rushing out from somewhere, beating on the fire with her coat, crying. I had tried to get up, to fight through the fire, to protect her, but Canberra was already pulling her away, pressing the gun to her temple.

I had staggered forward, my mind full of screams, my vision clouded by fires from another time, another place, reaching out with my mind to fight Canberra's trigger finger...

"Tell me." The short command from the shadows dragged me out of the past. I was still in my rat hole of an office in Uptown, sitting at a desk across from a barely-old-enough-to-shave adolescent hiding deep in the shadows.

"Why?"

He was angry, and for the first time, I actually heard him shift in the darkness, checking some reaction. His voice emerged, flat and lifeless from the dark, "The coroner said he was partially crushed. Multiple fractures. Broken rib fragments had punctured a lung and severed a vein, which were the two injuries determined to be fatal. There was surprising little evidence of smoke damage to his lung tissue. The coroner attributed this to his being trapped low to the ground and to the fact that he would likely have had difficulty breathing, given his injuries."

I listened to this catalog of pain, fighting my mind's desire to relive it, to feel against my arm the desperate heaves for air from Bruce's chest and to hear again his gasping final orders. I wondered if my own effort at control was as obvious to the boy as his was to me. "Morgue? Or police headquarters?" I asked him, knowing he would understand the question.

"Both," he answered, a menacing quality in the single word. He could infiltrate either place at will, he was telling me. Alfred Pennyworth spoke of trying to save the boy's soul. I understood suddenly how dangerous this no-longer child could be if Pennyworth failed. "The lack of smoke was because he had a rebreather."

It was not a question, and he apparently had decided I knew this much already. "He did," I confirmed.

"He let you use it."

"No." When Bruce had burst through the warehouse skylight, he knew what I was. "When I took it, he was dead."

"You took it?"

I closed my eyes, and Bruce Wayne's dead hand once more yielded the rebreather he had removed from his own mouth. He had already known he was going to die, and I would owe it to him to preserve his secret.

I opened my eyes again and glared toward the darkness where the boy still hid. "I do not appreciate the shadow interrogation. Your mentor died trying to save lives. Likely to make the world a safer place for you, among others. I know he didn't mean for you to take his training and hunt down his killer."

An angry hiss came from the shadows, but I ignored it.

"You want to know how he died? Canberra shot him. The armor held, but it stopped his heart anyway. The crash to the floor restarted it, but it also did the damage in the autopsy report. He regained consciousness. There was a fight. Canberra lost. I tried to help Bruce. I half-dragged him toward the entrance to the warehouse. He told me to take his armor and hide it and leave his body. Then he died. Okay?"

My rapid-fire narrative seemed to rattle through the room, empty of the emotion that it was stirring for both me and the boy. It was a very young voice that finally said, "Oh."

I could hear him wrestling this new information into his understanding of what had happened. After a long pause, he asked tentatively, "Canberra's body was - did Bat - did Bruce -?"

I was deeply relieved that the dark figure intruding in my life cared about how Canberra had died. I was more deeply relieved to be able to say, "No, Batman did not kill him. Canberra got caught in the same fire he had set. Had he any strength left, I think Batman might have tried to save him."

There was a sound in the shadows, choked off but recognizable for what it was: a swallowed sob. I listened to Dick Grayson struggle with his emotions and rediscover his self-control. "He trusted you," he finally observed.

"We had something on one another."

"He trusted you," Grayson repeated adamantly, having clearly come to some decision. He said more softly, "So does Alfred."

"Pennyworth made a promise to let me be."

A new kind of anger flowed from Grayson, something more adolescent and less complicated. He surprised me by stepping forward and resting a gloved hand heavily on the back of the client chair in front of my desk. "Lois Lane hired you."

I considered him blankly. Did he mean back then, or now?

"You don't have to confirm it," he continued after a pause. "You already know that's how I found you. She was the first lead I had on your whereabouts since you dropped off the map two years ago. Of all your known associates, she's the one who contacted you."

"She's Lois Lane," I dismissed.

His eyes narrowed behind the mask. "The last time she contacted you was to hire you to figure out why Lex Luthor wanted to buy the Daily Planet."

"That's a big leap."

"It was in Batman's notes. It was why I knew to track her."

He couldn't decide if he was warning me or threatening me. Neither could I. "Why are you telling me this?"

He took a moment to compose his answer. His voice was hard when he spoke, as if he had forced distance between what he was telling and who he was. "When I was eleven years old, Bruce Wayne told me he was going on a boring business trip to look at a property he wanted to buy. It was supposed to be a couple of days. It turned into a couple of weeks. He called every night. We made plans for my birthday. It turned out to be a good day for a funeral."

I forced myself to keep my eyes open, to meet Dick Grayson's uninflected gaze. "I'm sorry." It was inadequate, but there was nothing more I could offer.

"He never told me why he got into a feud with Luthor. He never explained that it was a case, that Batman was on the job as much as Bruce Wayne. He gave Alfred information and made him promise never to tell me." He paused significantly. "At least I knew why my parents died."

Now I couldn't look at him, had to close my eyes. I balled my fists against the echoing cries in my mind, against the desperate call of "Papa!" and the more resigned, "J'onn." The fire blossomed in shades of orange and yellow and white and blue, the smoke smudging my vision, making my eyes stream with tears I would need later. "There isn't always a why," I said.

He was so quiet in response that I finally made myself open my eyes again. He was still standing behind my client chair, watching me intently. The grim set of his mouth and jaw had softened, and I sensed the child he had once been, a boy with his arms thrown wide to the world, trying joyfully to catch it all. A deep capacity for love was shuttered into his much abused heart, and I ached to see it.

Something happened in the silence between us, some understanding reached below the threshold of consciousness. The rumble and squeal of the el pulling into the Cotton Street stop echoed into my office.

He stepped back a little, creating more distance between us. I could feel a calm in his mind that had not been there before. The train had started again, its approach almost loud enough to drown his words. "There is a why this time," he said. "I will expect to hear from you when you discover it."

Then the room was bright again, and without warning, he dove through the open window. I did not need to look to know he had dropped onto the roof of the inbound el.

I continued to sit in the dark for a long while after the final whistle of the train traveling down to street level was forgotten on the night air. The salt of drying tears prickled my cheeks.


	10. Chapter 10

Of all your known associates, she's the one who contacted you.

The echo of that sentence continued in my head long after Dick Grayson - or whatever the boy called himself in his costume - disappeared through my window. It slowly eclipsed lingering traces of his angry loneliness as the predominant thought in my mind.

Lois Lane had hired me to investigate Clark Kent. It was the first contact I had had with her since she had employed me to investigate Lex Luthor and then had found out my secret. There were reasons for that that Bruce Wayne's former ward had no reason to know. At the same time, I realized there might be reasons that I had not considered.

I turned on my desk lamp and opened a file drawer - one with actual files in it. I pulled out a fat folder of newspaper clippings.

I stared at it rather than opening it, not quite ready to face the headlines. Instead, I dredged up memories I had spent two years trying to drink into submission.

It had been early spring, so early that the worst snow drifts from winter were still remnants of slush on the sidewalks. Between the melting snow and the perpetual drizzle, the city sewers were fuller than usual, and there had been a general anxiety that any solid downpour would produce flash floods in the low lying parts of town. Umbrella salesmen did a brisk trade, and there wasn't an office in the city that didn't smell of damp wool. That included my own Midtown office.

The greyness of that spring had kept business brisk enough that I was entertaining the idea of taking on a partner. I hadn't gone much further than a half-hearted attempt to get Gus to leave the Parkview, but I had hired a secretary, the briskly efficient Eileen O'Malley. So it was that I had come in to my office one morning to find Eileen O'Malley toe-to-toe with Lois Lane.

O'Malley and Lane were cut from the same cloth, tough-minded, independent women who had defied so much to get where they were that they were not about to let anyone push them around. I had been tempted to see how long they could glare at each other, but they had noticed my entrance. Both turned toward me, Eileen greeting with a "Mr. Jones," and Lois saying, "John-"

"Hello, Lois," I replied. "Any messages, Eileen?"

"On your desk," Eileen had answered, still giving Lois a disapproving look. "And Miss Lois Lane has been most insistent that she should see you. She was unwilling to wait for a ten o'clock appointment."

I nodded as I hung my hat and coat on the coat tree inside the front office door. "Guess it's a lucky thing I cracked the Watson case last night and could come in early today. Anything I need to attend to before I see Miss Lane?"

I could tell Lois was deeply irritated to be the subject of this third-person conversation, but it was always wise to remind Lane whose turf she was on. Eileen had made mention of a phone call I might want to return, and I made a show of deciding it could wait, and by the time I had led Lois back into my private office, she was quietly fuming.

She had waited until I closed the door to say, "Nice to see you, too, Jones."

I sat at my desk and met her gaze levelly. "What do you want, Lane?"

She clearly didn't have the energy for another standoff, because she sighed and sat in one of the client chairs. "It's Lex."

I snorted. "Please tell me you aren't hiring me for boyfriend troubles. From what I've seen, you can handle those on your own."

Her eyes flashed angrily. "I don't like being played, Jones."

I raised my hands in a warding gesture. "I'm not defending Gus. But I told you then and I'll tell you now, I don't get involved in my friends' romances."

"I'm not asking you to," she shot back, but her tone had softened a little. She reached into her handbag and pulled out a press clipping that she handed to me. "It's about this."

I reached forward to accept the clipping. It was the announcement of Luthor's intent to purchase the Daily Planet. I smiled. "Ah, he really does love you."

Her teeth had begun worrying her lower lip, and her eyes were troubled. "That's just it," she had said. "If he did love me, he would listen to me when I told him not to do this."

"Do you want him to love you?"

She was back to glaring. "That's not the issue, Jones. Love is for suckers."

I recoiled a little. "I'm sorry, Lane. I didn't realize -"

"Don't, Jones. The patter doesn't suit you. Just shut up and listen."

I had shut up, and Lane had explained her misgivings. She wasn't sure about the long-term future of her six month old relationship with Lex Luthor, but she was sure she didn't want him signing her paycheck. The personal reasons were obvious enough, but there were also professional considerations. What if a story emerged that might damage Luthor's interests? Would he allow it to be printed? If he and Lois remained an item, would he pressure her to drop her work in favor of loyalty to him? I refrained from advising her that if she were that worried about it, she should break off with him, but after a half-hour she had persuaded me to take the case.

Lois Lane would pay me a $25 retainer and $10 a day plus expenses to find out why Lex Luthor really wanted to buy the Daily Planet. I had cut her a deal on the rate because we had been friends, even if things had gone sour for her and Gus.

As I walked her to the door of my inner office, she had asked if I still saw him.

"Every Tuesday for lunch," I had replied. "Like always."

"Say hi for me?"

"I'll think about it."

She had nodded to herself. "He should've been more like you, Jones. I'll call you tomorrow."

I had opened the door for her without reply, watching as she walked out through the front office without even a glance at Eileen.

I had waited until she was gone to cross to Eileen's desk to hand her the cashier's check Lois had given me. There had been a young woman sitting beside Eileen's desk, and I had given her a quick smile as I handed the money over. "Expect her to call tomorrow," I told Eileen, "and try to be nice. Who's your friend?"

The girl - a bare 20 years old, I learned later - had ducked her head a little and blushed. Eileen answered, "This is my cousin, Hortense. She's just getting settled into the city, so we're going for lunch."

"I was afraid I'd be late on the subway," Hortense had blurted, explaining her early presence.

I had given her my best reassuring grin. "Looks like you must've mastered it, then."

The shyly flattered smile that dimpled her cheeks still haunts me. I trusted my tough guy looks and cynical attitude to counteract my casual flirtation, not realizing I was playing into the kid's romantic vision of city life. She had expected to find the excitement of the gangster movies she watched when she left the farm for Metropolis, and she did. She found so much excitement, it killed her.

I opened the file folder in front of me, skipping past the first few headlines to the shocking discovery that Hortense Arroyo, 20, had been shot dead before her body burned in the rum-fed fire of a warehouse on the edge of Suicide Slum. Police had written off the "shadowy figure" theory, suspecting that Douglas Canberra, 38, had been the trigger man. Canberra, a victim of the fire, had at one time been employed by billionaire Lex Luthor. It was suspected that Canberra had been hired to rough up competitor Bruce Wayne, also dead at the scene. No one was quite sure what Arroyo had been doing on the scene, but Wayne was known for being a playboy. She was likely some poor girl with stars in her eyes, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

That was the best theory the police could come up with, at any rate. When Luthor sued for libel over the implication he might have something to do with Wayne's death, an aggressive investigation proved that the warehouse full of illegal rum was owned by a shadow corporation linked to Luthor. I turned to the next headline: "Lex Luthor: Rum Runner." The subheadline read, "Sinister motives emerge for billionaire's temperance campaign."

The by-line?

Lois Lane.

There was a trial. I had testified. Lex Luthor had avoided jail time, in part by disavowing any ongoing relationship with Canberra, in part by implicating a junior executive in establishing and running the shadow corporation (without Luthor's knowledge, he claimed), and in part by making me the source of reasonable doubt.

I was never a suspect in the deaths of Canberra, Arroyo, and Wayne, but most of Metropolis believed I had perjured myself when I claimed to have no knowledge of what happened that night. Lois Lane knew I lied.

She never published what she knew.

The phone on my desk rang, jarring me from my thoughts. I gritted my teeth, knowing who was calling.

The phone rang again.

I thought about not answering, then thought better of it. I picked up the handset. "Jones here."

"Nice subtle investigation you started, Jones."

"Does this mean I'm fired?" I tried not to sound to hopeful.

"You wish," Lois Lane retorted. "Although we should rethink our contract. I'm not paying you double to stumble around drunk at the Parkview Hotel."

"Even if I tell you Clark Kent might be somehow tied to Bruce Wayne?"

I got the satisfaction of hearing her sharp intake of breath. That surprised her. "Spill," she demanded.

"I don't think so. It's too early to say anything for sure."

"I'm not paying you for veiled hints, Jones."

"You know Superman saved the Marston baby, right?"

"You're not the only one who can use a library."

It took some effort, but I kept my voice even. "You got any other facts in this case you want to tell me about?"

"I told you, there's some link between Kent and Superman. It isn't like I went to you before I did my homework."

"Sounds like you were doing fine without me."

I could almost hear her scowl. "Don't think for a second I would've hired you, Jones, if I could've figured out the answer to this myself. I know the link is there. Your job is to find out what it is."

"Why didn't Kent leave with you to cover the Interborough Bridge?" I asked.

"You saw that?" she again sounded surprised.

"I'm asking you, aren't I?"

"You didn't go in to find out?"

I chuckled without humor. "Ignoring the fact that I was in the process of having my head bashed in, how far do you think I would get past Planet security? I'm sure the rumor mill already revealed my run in with Rockwell."

"It did," she replied dryly. "And Jones?"

"Yes?"

Her voice dropped into a lower, more dangerous sounding register. "Don't think for a second that I hired you for old time's sake or because I couldn't find a dozen other private dicks. I could probably even find a couple as closed-mouth as you. But you and I both know you could get past Planet security without anyone batting an eye."

I made my voice hard. "I don't work that way, Lane."

She laughed, and it was a nasty sound. "You'll work that way this time. Just like you did for Wayne."

"That right there should be reason enough for you not to ask this of me," I pointed out.

"That right there is every reason why you shouldn't refuse me," she shot back. "You were certainly visible enough in Midtown today to merit a reopening of your file."

"And if I call your bluff? Things haven't changed that much in two years."

"Don't try me, Jones."

I closed my eyes. There were good reasons why Lois had not ratted me out when she discovered the truth about me. Part of it, I knew, was that no one would believe the story. Or rather, that was what I knew Lois thought, or had thought then. I was not so sure about people's unwillingness to believe, and Lane knew it. "You're asking too much," I protested.

"Consider it penance," she replied briskly. "God knows you've got that concept down."

As if on cue, my desk began to shudder with the vibrations of an approaching el train. "You never answered my question," I said into the phone, "about Kent's excuse."

"His official line? He went to take a piss and I couldn't wait for him." The train rattled closer, its brakes beginning to squeal. Her voice got softer again. "He's a liar, Jones, and you're going to catch him for me." The train was now at its loudest, hurtling past my window and drawing screams from the metal tracks as the brakes began to work in earnest. Lois was almost whispering. "You're going to catch him for the same reason I know you can still hear me right now. Understood?"

I waited a few beats for the train to pull into the station. In the resulting quiet, I spoke almost as softly as Lois had. "Yeah. I understand."

"Good-bye, Jones. I'll expect more tomorrow." She hung up.

I sat with the phone pressed to my ear a moment longer, listening to the dial tone blend with the noise of the train starting up again. When the sound of the train faded into the distance, I gently returned the handset to its cradle. My eyes drifted over the surface of my desk, resting on the file folder with Lois Lane's story face up in front of me. I slammed the side of my fist down on the folder in frustration, almost forgetting to check my strength. A horrified feeling settled in my throat, and I moved carefully to close the folder and put it back, only vaguely relieved that I had not broken anything. I shut the angry and accusing newspaper headlines back into their file drawer and opened the drawer on the other side of the desk.

The bottle was still there, only one third consumed.

I pulled it out of its home and set it directly in front of me on my desk. I centered it on the blotter. The black label made me promises I almost believed.

I reached for my chipped coffee mug, wiping the rim. I set it next to the phone. I imagined all the things I could have said to Lois Lane.

The whiskey could have helped. Or it might not have. Maybe this whole night had been just a case of the DTs and one drink could make it all go away. It wasn't true, but a part of me wanted it to be true. A part of me wanted to pretend I was just another delusional drunk, that the voices in my head were short circuits of brain chemistry exacerbated by alcohol.

For the first time in a long time, two of those voices rang clear in my head, their faces rising in memory. I wanted to remember as much as I ached to forget.

"I love you, Papa," one of the voices whispered.

I balled my fists and stared at the bottle of booze in front of me. Lois Lane had no idea what she was doing to me. Even if she knew, I wasn't sure she'd care.

Who would?

My daughter had had her mother's eyes. I knew this because two years ago, a rum-fed fire broke a mental block that had kept me from remembering them - or their fate. Jack Daniels had kept them at bay ever since.

It still could.

I reached out my hand, tracing my thumb across the words "Old No. 7."

In my memory, my wife's fevered fingers brushed my cheek.

I could smell the fires, the smoke of burning flesh.

I clenched my fingers against the bottle.

Lois Lane didn't have a clue.


	11. Chapter 11

"Count it." It was Bruce Wayne's voice, but I wasn't looking at him. My gaze was focused on a thick envelope on the table in front of me.  
"I already told you," I heard myself answering, "I cannot take on another case right now. I appreciate-"

"Count it, and then we'll talk."

My hands turned the envelope over and untucked the flap. I expected twenties or fifties. Instead there were three fives, six twos, and several ones. The whole stack totaled $53. I remember looking up at him sharply, but in my dream-memory, his face swam casually into view, a knowing quirk shaping his lips into an almost-smile.

"I didn't think your strategy included losing that much," he commented lightly. It wasn't just the money I had lost to him. It was all the money I had lost the previous night, in exactly the denominations that I lost it. Not the same bills, I could see, but still a prodigious display of observation.

I saw no choice but to play my trump card. "You're Matches Malone."

"And you're Barney Smith," he rebutted, reporting the name I had used to join Douglas Canberra's poker game. "You're pyrophobic." His words were accompanied by a flood of mental images, of my observed flinches at Malone's perpetual string of matches and ...

My eyes narrowed at him. "You're Batman."

I had caught him flatfooted, but only fleetingly. "Telepath?"

I nodded, and Bruce's face unfocused, blurred into the mask of the Bat, and then we were in the flames, his cape over me, my arm under his shoulders, both of us staggering, and Bruce urging me mentally to read his thoughts. The tumult of images, information and instructions flooded over me, and in the maelstrom, my dream-self asked what I didn't know to ask at the time:

What about Kent?

"What about Kent?" I mumbled aloud, waking myself. One arm was thrown over my eyes against the early morning sun. The other arm hung over the edge of the couch, its fingers wrapped around the neck of a bottle. I felt a sort of all over nausea, a clammy unpleasantness that wasn't limited to my stomach. It was an act of will to let my legs down from the couch and sit up.

I sat dumbly for a long moment, vaguely confused at the stained walls and battered furniture of my office. My throat felt smoke burned, and my eyes were gummy and raw. Slowly, the memory of the last 24 hours filtered back to me, reminded me it had been two years since I had staggered from a burning warehouse, my arms laden with body armor and instructions for hiding it.

My eyes traveled down to the bottle still in my hand. It was still 2/3 full, its cap still in place.

I opened my fingers and let it fall the two inches to the floor. It hit with a clunk and tipped onto its side, a burbling noise sounding from the liquid it contained. My hands trembled as I brought them up to cover my face.

I had descended into the sewers, guided by memories not my own to an underground station for a subway line that was never built. Batman's armor would still be there now, I knew. I should tell Dick Grayson.

Bruce Wayne had known what he was doing. In giving me the mission of keeping his secret safe, he had bought my body time to heal itself enough to resist my desire to die. I was badly burned, barely sane, and knew only I needed to get far away from both the scene of the crime and from Batman's hidey hole. I suspected I would never have any memory of how I ended up back at my Midtown apartment, but I remember Lois Lane finding me.

I could still see the horror in her expression as she regarded my crisped flesh and realized no human body could come in that shade of green. I could still feel my own horror at being so completely unable to disappear before she could see me.

In the span of those two weeks, two humans had learned my secret. One had died, and the other was now using it against me.

I should have fled into the wilderness. It was folly to think that burying myself in Uptown and drowning myself in whiskey was enough.

I made myself stand, grimacing with the effort. I had remembered to take off my jacket, tie and shoes, but the rest of me was rumpled. I could feel the creases in my skin from my clothes, as well as a layer of city grime.

I swayed as I peeled off my shirt and balled it, throwing it back into a corner of the couch. I undid my belt and stripped my trousers as well, draping them over the back of my client chair after smoothing them with the flat of my hand. A few staggering steps brought me to the sink, and I opened the medicine cabinet to extract a washcloth.

The face that regarded me from the medicine cabinet mirror actually looked better than I felt. The eyes were red-rimmed and bleary, and the jaw had a grim set to it, but the evidence of a soul dragged through nightmare was only in the hollowness of my pupils where it could easily be missed.

I opened the tap and ran the water as hot as it would get, filling the basin and soaking my washcloth. I bathed my neck and armpits and arms - any skin uncovered by my undershirt. Then I bent over to splash water onto my face and scrub it into a new configuration.

Two years of enforcing my life in John Jones's body with a steady diet of Jack Daniels made the art of changing feel awkward at first. The square jaw and flattened nose resisted my initial attempts to imagine them otherwise. The knack returned quickly, though, nature taking over where nurture resisted. When I finally straightened in front of the mirror, the bland, unremarkable features of Alonzo Gray gazed back at me.

With the face established, the rest of my body responded easily to demands to be slimmer, shorter, more average. I had learned years ago that most people would have to spend a significant amount of time with Lonnie Gray before they would even remember having met him. In my early efforts to craft an inoffensive alias, I had succeeded in making an unmemorable one. There were many more years of trial and error that finally led me to be John Jones.

John Jones had had friends. He was mysterious but trustworthy. Likeable in his way. He had been making his way like any other Joe. I embraced his fortunes as my own. Now his fortunes had driven me to resurrect Lonnie Gray.

In that moment, I hated Lois Lane.

Jones's clothes would not fit Gray, so I stepped back from the mirror and concentrated. I felt my cultivated human sensibilities recoil a bit as my undershirt and boxers began to stretch and squirm, assuming the dimensions of a grey off-the-rack suit, a clean shirt, and an unobtrusive tie. A little more focus yielded a hat that was subtly last season and a pair of black shoes.

I forced my face into a smile I didn't feel. Lonnie's face in the mirror showed a blandly pleasant expression. It would do.

I took another step back and the heel of my shoe hit the bottle of whiskey on the floor. I picked it up and gave it a hard look. Lonnie was a teetotaler. It took an effort to resist the urge to sully him.

I did resist, though, and put the bottle back in its drawer. There was only one way I was going to resolve the mystery of Clark Kent's relationship to Superman, and that was going to be by sticking to Kent like glue. Becoming Lonnie was just the first step.

I glanced at the clock on the file cabinet. I had forgotten to wind it; its hands had died at 4:36. I sighed and turned my sights outward. By the shadows from the sun, it wasn't later than 8. I needed to get to Midtown, but Gray shouldn't be seen anywhere near Jones's office, no matter how forgettable he was. I reached out with my mind to feel the light reflecting from my body and altered my surface until the rays bent around me. The mirror confirmed my success; I had become invisible.

One more step, then. One more power deliberately forgotten and suppressed. I ducked my head to step out of my window and onto the ledge. The sun felt warm despite my deflection of its light. I found myself suddenly wishing I could be out on the beach, having a beer with Gus and watching Lorna and Betsy play in the waves. I could find a new line of work, maybe set up a business in Vernon...

I shook myself from my fantasy. Down the track, the inbound el was braking into the Cotton Street platform. I needed to get moving. I rose up on my toes and leapt into the morning sky.


	12. Chapter 12

I did not have a firm plan when I abandoned my flight and took myself invisibly down to the subway platform of the Planet Plaza stop. I waited until a subway pulled in and let myself blend into the rush hour crowd, appearing mid-stride in the throng. As densely as people were packed, anyone who saw me would assume I had darted out from in front of someone else. I let the surge of reporters and brokers and lawyers carry me in the direction of the turnstiles and emerged with them into another sunny Metropolis day.  
In the morning light, viewed from the angle of the subway exit on Madison Street, the Daily Planet building rose with an air of monolithic power. It was about half past eight, and the sun was high enough that the sphere atop the building created a perfect eclipse. I spent an impressed moment studying the corona effect of the sun and the way it made the newspaper building seem to glow triumphantly. I walked forward enough to be out of the way of the people rushing to work, but that alone belied that Alonzo Gray was a small towner.

It wasn't an entirely intentional ruse. I had come the previous day on the streetcar, and I'd arrived too early to see the Planet at its most mesmerizing. Perhaps it was the new face, or the fresh sobriety, but for the first time in many years, I was struck by the enormity of the city and the untrammeled ambition of its occupants. I had experienced a similar sense of awe in another city, in the shadow of another newspaper building, inexorable in a different way, all filigree and gothic stonework. A sense of empathy stirred within me for the brash arrogance of the newsmen who thought nothing of submerging entire cities in their shadows.

In their own way, humans were a race of storytellers, and their stories were like their lives: short, brusque and insistent.

I continued to stand on the Plaza, stretching my mind tentatively to the swirl of people moving around me. I felt the mix of emotions they projected toward the stationary Lonnie Smith: irritation, amusement, cynicism, pity. Not much curiosity. They saw me (or didn't in some cases, my form just a part of an unconsidered mobile landscape) and decided what I was and gave me no further thought. So far, so good.

I reached further, skimming the surface of thoughts until I caught the name Kent. I pinpointed the source and began drifting across the Plaza, keeping my eyes relatively fixed on the spectacle of the Planet building. Other senses caught hold, and I heard a young voice tossing off perfunctory apologies as a set of footsteps pounded too-fast up the subway steps.

I took another couple of inattentive steps sideways.

Jimmy Olsen careened into me, stumbling to the ground and landing on his hands and knees with a loud, "Oof!" His camera skittered across the concrete.

"I'm so sorry!" I apologized with an overdone sense of horror that seemed appropriate to a newcomer to the city. I chased down the camera, calling back, "Are you all right?"

Olsen, sensing my move to his camera, was on his feet in a flash, his hands outstretched toward the box in my hands. I, for my part, kept a firm hold on the camera, hoping I had pasted a look of appropriate reverence on Lonnie Gray's face. "This is a 4X5 Speed Graphic," I said, and I felt Olsen's urgency calm a tad. I raised my face and met his eyes, handing over the camera with some reluctance. "And the lens - is that that new Kodak Ektar?"

"Yep," Olsen replied proudly, taking the camera and looking it over anxiously. "Still in one piece, too. White would kill me if I busted this up."

"Perry White?" I asked, looking impressed.

"Yeah. Frankie runs the camera pool, but -" He looked up, suddenly aware of me as more than an unwitting obstacle or a fellow camera enthusiast. His eyes narrowed. "Say, who are you, mister?"

I stuck my hand out. "Alonzo Gray, but everyone just calls me Lonnie. From out of Pueblo, Colorado. I write a column for the Pueblo Nugget, photograph the high school sports. Nothing like what you get out here." I made myself sound wistful.

Olsen grinned, and it made him look about 14, although I suspected he was closer to 17. He accepted my handshake and spoke in a worldly tone, "So that's how you knew the lens. Jimmy Olsen. I work for the Planet here." He jerked his head in the direction of the building, putting on an air of forced nonchalance. His chest had puffed out a bit, and he continued. "I was actually just about to have breakfast with -"

"Oh my god, he's going to jump!" a woman's voice shrilled, and a collective gasp seemed to come from the crowd. Everyone's necks craned upward, and Olsen's bravura confidence slipped as he fumbled with his camera and tried to follow the finger pointings of the other people in the Plaza.

I squinted in the indicated direction, trying to both shield my eyes from the sun's glare and to see the side of the Daily Planet building. My attention was so focused on finding whoever "he" was that even though I heard the whoosh, I wasn't quick enough to isolate where it had come from.

"Holy smokes!" Beside me, Jimmy Olsen had his camera up and now everyone could see Superman zooming along the side of the building. I listened to the ratchets and shutter clicks as Olsen snapped photo after photo and Superman stopped in midair around the 40th story or so. The crowd buzzed, the sound turning to thinly masked disappointment as the person on the ledge finally turned around and disappeared back into the building.

Olsen let out a sigh and let his camera drop down to his chest. "I thought I'd get a catch-shot. I can get those on page 1."

"Are you kidding?" I asked. "That was great! What do you think he said?"

Olsen shrugged, his sense of anti-climax unforced this time. "The usual stuff. Life's worth living, if it's so bad now it can only get better, think of your ma..."

"Your ma?" The question was out before I could stop it, but I followed quickly with, "Sounds like good advice to me." I filed the information away, still puzzled. Like much of Metropolis, I knew little of Superman. I read about his exploits in the paper, and I had seen enough speculation about his origin to believe none of it.

"Yeah," Olsen agreed without enthusiasm. "At least I got some shots," he consoled himself. Then he brightened. "And Lois wasn't here! Oh, she'll be fit to be tied."

"Lois?"

Olsen resumed his big-city air. "Lois Lane. You must know about her. She always gets the scoop."

"We've picked up a couple of her stories off the wire," I allowed, weaving the lies thick and full, certain they would stand up. "You know her?"

He tapped his camera. "I'm her main photographer," he boasted, then glanced at his watch. He looked a little agitated as he saw the time, but he kept up his attitude. "You eat yet?"

I shook my head. "I was going to when I got down here but then I saw the building and-"

"Yeah, it's something, all right. Why don't you come with me to the Print Room? You should meet Clark Kent. He comes from the middle of nowhere, too."

The way Olsen said it had Lois Lane's intonation, and I imagined the string of casual dismissals she must have offered Kent over the years. It would be a handy disguise for a mastermind, I decided, just like Lonnie Gray's rube act was working its own kind of magic for me now. "What's the Print Room?" I asked.

Olsen grinned. "Just follow me," he directed confidently. "This place has the best breakfasts in Metropolis."

I obeyed Olsen's request, making a point of staring at various signage and architecture in a stunned small-town way. Olsen paused impatiently for me, and I hurried apologetically to enter the Print Room with him.

Carol barely glanced at me as I entered, her eyes instead recognizing Olsen. "Heya, Jimmy. Clark's in your usual booth. He with you?"

The "he" was me, and Olsen nodded. "Lonnie Gray. New in town."

Carol gave me a quick once over as I started to smile and pretend not to remember the ache of being completely unknown. "Oh, yeah?" Carol said. "Well, go on then. Clark's waiting." And she hustled away before I could say hello.

Olsen was already moving forward. "C'mon," he urged over his shoulder, and I followed him, forcing myself not to look after the waitress who knew my usual and would yell it back to the cook as soon as I walked in. She didn't know Lonnie Gray.

But Olsen wasn't wasting time, and as we approached the booth by the window I suddenly remembered that he was leading me to Clark Kent, who might have something to do with Superman, and not in a good way. Had he seen the jumper through the diner window? How could he not? But he sat there, a study of patient disinterest. He had two fingers of one hand settled idly through the handle of a coffee cup, and he was wearing a blue pinstripe suit and a sedate tie. There was a grey fedora on the hat tree at the end of the booth. He didn't look like any mastermind I'd ever imagine.

Olsen bounded up to him, his voice effusive. "Hey, Clark. Did you see him?"

Kent smiled at the youngster. "I'm afraid I missed most of it. I was talking to Artie." Olsen looked about to say something, but Kent noticed me and spoke. "Who's your friend?"

"Oh, right! Sorry. Clark Kent, Alonzo Gray, from... where was it you said you were from again?"

Kent half rose in the booth and reached out his hand. I shook it. "Pueblo, Colorado. I write for the Pueblo Nugget. That was some show out there."

I had hoped to get some reaction from Kent, but he only smiled as if amused by my enthusiasm. "The Pueblo Nugget, huh? I've heard of it. I got my start at the Smallville Ledger. Have a seat. Join us." His tone was friendly, and I could feel the warm associations his mind was making as I settled into the booth across from him, sliding over so Olsen could sit.

"I always dreamed I'd make it to Metropolis one day, see the Daily Planet building. I never dreamed I'd see Superman," I said.

Kent smiled again and flagged the waitress. "Coffee?" he asked me.

"Sure," I agreed, and Carol had read the signal before she got to the table to ask. She brought the steaming cup with her and thumped it in front of me.

"What can I get you gentlemen?" she asked. "Usual, Clark?"

"You know me too well, Carol."

She offered him an indulgent smile of a sort I'd rarely seen on her features before turning more briskly to Olsen. "And you, Jimmy? Which half of the menu are you going to devour today?"

"I'm a growing boy!" he protested. "I need an order of pancakes and sides of sausage and bacon to go with my large orange juice."

Carol shook her head. "Whatever you say, Jimmy." Then she turned her attention to me.

"Two eggs, over easy, hash browns, toast," I rattled off.

Carol's pencil scratched across an order pad, and I felt Clark Kent's eyes drifting to the menus still standing upright and untouched between the ketchup and mustard bottles. "White, wheat or rye?" Carol asked.

I blinked. "Oh. Um, wheat, I guess."

"You got it. Be by with more coffee in a bit."

Carol left, and Kent sipped his coffee. "You order like a man who eats at a lot of diners." There was the barest hint of suspicion under his tone, but he seemed less worried than pleased with himself at the likely sounding guess.

"Well, just the one, really. May's, just across from the Nugget office. Doesn't give a choice of toast, though."

Olsen let out a low whistle. "You really are from the sticks, aren't you?"

"Arlene's never had a choice of toast, either," Kent recalled fondly. "Of course, Arlene would bake her bread every morning before opening, and it smelled so good, you wouldn't think about any other type of bread."

"Sounds heavenly. Where's Arlene's?"

"Kansas," Kent answered, and his mind flooded with memories of wide open spaces and smiling Midwesterners. I gathered the details of sunlight filtered through freshly starched gingham curtains, of pies delivered from Ma's kitchen to Arlene's diner. It jarred me, although I kept the reaction from my face. I had been crafting an image of Clark Kent as a cunning shyster, but that didn't jive with the farmboy innocence radiating from the man sitting across from me.

"That's where you were before here?" I asked.

Kent nodded. "Definitely a different kind of news."

"Yeah, I bet. Worst we get back home are ski accidents or avalanches."

"Thresher accidents and blizzards," Kent compared, "and grain futures." I could feel him deciding to like me and trust me. Or at least, to like and trust Lonnie Gray.

"I knew the two of you would get along," Olsen half-gloated, half-grumped. "Clark, aren't you going to ask if I got any good shots?"

"You always do, Jimmy," Kent answered with a hint of amusement, and I could sense him cataloging Olsen's Superman photo collection.

I shook my head. "This is surreal. That was Superman out there and we're just sitting here getting breakfast, and I'm sitting with a reporter and a photographer from the Daily Planet. Man, when Michael hears about this, he won't believe me!"

"Who's Michael?" Olsen asked.

"My editor. I think he expects me to spend my whole vacation getting lost on the subway."

Carol reappeared at our table, arms laden with plates. "You wouldn't be the first," she remarked, entering the conversation easily, "but if you got this far, you should be okay. Two eggs over easy." She set the plate in front of me, then deposited Kent's omelet and Olsen's pancakes. Olsen shifted his camera a little further from his plate and began eating voraciously as Kent thanked Carol. Kent and I shared a smirk over the boy's appetite.

"You know," Kent began thoughtfully, "Jimmy, you have any sense of Perry wanting us on anything special today?"

Olsen looked up. "Don' fink tho," he mumbled around a mouthful of pancake. He swallowed, then tried again. "I don't think so. Why?"

"Well, I was just thinking, if Lonnie here doesn't have any pressing business, maybe we could give him a tour of the Planet."

I lowered my knife and fork and gave Kent a "gee-whiz" stare. "You would do that?"

"If you were interested."

"Am I? Heck, just meeting the two of you has already made this vacation. I was hoping to get on the public tour but -"

"Oh, you have to let us show you the whole thing," Olsen decided, clearly enamored of the idea now that it had been mentioned. "We can show you the actual press and the archive and the editorial floor and-"

"Slow down, Jimmy," Kent advised, but he was smiling. "If a big story comes through we might have to cut it short," he warned me, "but if you don't mind tagging along-"

"Oh, Mr. Kent-"

"Clark."

"Clark. I don't want to put you out-"

"It'd be no trouble."

"Well, count me in then," I enthused. It was only partly show. I felt an odd sort of kinship with Clark Kent, an awareness of a welcoming sort of charm that I had not recognized from him when I met him as John Jones. A man who trusted so easily...

"It's settled then. We'll finish breakfast and then head on over. Probably sooner than later, since Perry's going to want to see Jimmy's snaps."

"Got it," I agreed, digging into my hash browns. It was suddenly clear to me why it had taken Lane so long to connect the arrivals of Clark Kent and Superman. Kent was a nice enough guy, although definitely not in Lane's league. And he certainly didn't seem to have the make up of a criminal or even of someone who might have a friend who could fly. But a doubt lingered. Bruce Wayne had known something involving Clark Kent, and he may have died for it.

I spread some egg yolk on my toast and took a bite. I wasn't certain I was any closer to any answers, but I'd gotten one of my objectives. I was going to be able to stick close to Clark Kent for at least a little while.


	13. Chapter 13

The Planet building was buzzing when we emerged from the elevators into the newsroom, and I felt a sudden chill. My attention had been focused on making and sustaining contact with Clark Kent, and I had been charmed by him. It had not occurred to me to wonder at his unconcern about Superman's appearance, or about his apparent lack of interest in finding out who had been perched on the ledge of the office building he worked in. Now that I was in the bustle of an office clearly rattled by the events of the morning, I wondered if what I took for an overlay of urban sophistication might instead be icy sanguinity.  
"Jimmy, tell me you've got pictures," Lois Lane barked as soon as we came into her line of sight.

Olsen mugged a little and held up the camera. "You know it."

"Well, get them down to developing and quit dawdling. MPD needs to see them."

"MPD?"

"GO, Jimmy! Before Perry gets out here and yells more."

I'm going, I'm going. Geez."

Kent's brow was creased. "What do the police need? I thought Superman-"

"Superman got the guy off the ledge, but apparently the pep talk didn't take. Security let him use the john." Lane made a set of gestures at her wrists. "Got both arteries. Cops are reading security the riot act now."

"Dear lord." Kent looked genuinely stricken, and he projected honest shock. "I take it he's-"

"Dead. Rockwell scooped the damned story, too. Already was on it when I got in. And who the hell are you?"

Lois had finally noticed me, and I offered an apologetic smile. "Alonzo Gray. I'm with the Pueblo Nugget -"

Lane glanced down at the hand I held out and ignored it. "Okay, Mr. Small Town Reporter. Who authorized-"

Kent cleared his throat. "I did. I offered to give him a tour..."

"We can do it another time," I hastened to offer, picking up cues from the minds around me about appropriate reactions. "Or if-"

"No," Kent cut me off, "I promised the tour, and I'm betting my column inches are going to be filled with Rockwell's story anyway. Just let me - Lois, what was the man's name?"

Lane shrugged, turning away from me and giving Kent her distracted attention. "Damned if I know. Not my story. One of those lawyers with Gravewood and Teasbury and Associates. Ask Rockwell. I'm sure you'll see him on your little tour. I gotta go check in on something. Have fun with Smallville, Mr. Small Paper." And then she was gone, hastening off across the newsroom.

Kent stood beside a desk, his expression numb. "You really don't need to give me a tour or anything," I said. "I can see myself out and maybe if I leave you my card-"

"No, Alonzo-"

"Lonnie."

"Lonnie. You'll get your tour. I just - it never occurred to me that -"

I waited a beat before asking carefully, "Do you think it's someone you know?"

Images of familiar faces from the 40th-42nd floors flooded Kent's mind, but he was shaking his head. "I have a knack for faces, even when I don't know someone by name. It's not like I was friends with anybody at Gravewood and Teasbury, but you see people in the lobby -" He broke off.

"I know how you mean," I said quietly, meaning it. The emotion, the genuine regret radiating from him, was all too familiar. "Should we go get coffee?" I suggested. "If you want to talk or anything - I know I'm more or less a stranger, but -"

Kent gave me a quick smile. "I miss country manners sometimes," he revealed, and his gratitude was evident. "It's just the shock, is all. In Metropolis, you hear Superman is involved, you always figure everything turned out all right, you know? I mean... he's Superman."

There was a rawness of faith in his tone, a sort of awe that genuinely surprised me. I had sold myself on the idea that he had some connection to Superman, but the way he revered the legend, the sense of horror he felt at the taint on that legend this would bring - it seemed at odds with someone collaborating with a supposed superhero. The doubt that assailed him as a result of Superman's failure to save a suicidal man was like a crisis of faith.

"Not even Superman could solve every crisis," I tried to reassure, half surprised by the flare of anger that Kent kept under the surface.

"He should," Kent stated firmly, almost as if it were a resolution. He frowned slightly, then shook his head. "But there's nothing we can do about it now, and I did promise this tour. Should we start with the actual presses?"

I hesitated, trying to find the right response.

"Seriously, Lonnie. It'll help take my mind off this. Plus the presses are in the basement. Opposite direction of all this activity."

"Okay," I agreed. "I sort of meant to ask about that."

"About what?" Kent was heading toward the stairway exit, and I followed.

"I thought most places took the top floors of the buildings they own."

Kent actually chuckled as he held open the door for me. "Not the Planet. Perry wouldn't hear of it. A newsroom up on 73? Our reporters would get scooped all the time while they were waiting for an elevator." His voice had taken on a tone that I recognized as a parody of the Planet's fiery editor.

I smirked. "Not such a problem in Pueblo."

"Or Smallville," Kent acknowledged, holding open the stairway door. "Sorry about the stairs there, but the elevator car for the presses doesn't stop on 4. We used to only use the basement plus the first three floors, not counting the lobby."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Before my time, but they expanded after the war." The suicide of the lawyer still weighed on Kent's mind, but he was finding relief in his tour guide duties, and I was happy to give him an excuse to think of something else. As I followed him down the stairs to the third floor, I found I was growing more certain that Lane had misjudged him. Even after 4 years in the city, the tarnish Metropolis put on everyone had barely patinaed his surface. Two years ago that tarnish would have been even fainter. And Kent had the energy of a man who was compelled to do the right thing.

It suddenly struck me that the reason Bruce Wayne might have been interested in Kent could have had something to do with the man's reporting. Could Kent have put something in his stories that suggested suspicion of Lex Luthor's underhanded dealings? I would need to get into the archive and -

"Lonnie?"

"Sorry," I apologized, realizing belatedly that the fervor of my new idea had caught my external self off guard. I had paused beside a potted shrub that sat next to the stairway door on the third floor. "I thought for a second this was related to an aspen tree. Made me feel a little homesick."

Kent bought my lie, which meant either it was better than I anticipated or he was still too distracted to pay too close attention. His words suggested the former. "I sometimes think the water in the Sound looks like waving wheat," he confessed as we waited for the elevator. "But nothing makes the same whisking rustle when the wind blows through it."

"I can imagine," I sympathized, picking the image from his mind as he spoke. I tasted a longing in him that I understood. He felt he had a place in Metropolis, but he was not home.

The elevator doors opened, and a half dozen people streamed out. Kent led the way in, then smiled as he hit the button for the basement. "Next stop, the biggest, fastest presses in the business."

I answered his smile with one of my own. "I can't wait."


	14. Chapter 14

It took us an hour to work our way back up to the third floor, where the accountants and advertising editors for the Planet were housed. Kent gave me a lopsided smile as we crossed the floor. "They stick the newsroom up on four so we think we're the top of the food chain. Down here they call us the glamour boys."  
I returned Kent's smile with a knowing one of my own. "Money talks its own language."

"First rule of serious reporting - if the spotlight is pointing one direction, better look to see what it's trying to distract you from."

I nodded in acknowledgment. "Not so much an issue in Pueblo," I confessed. "We have our scandals from time to time, but -" I shrugged.

Kent turned the knob on the stairway door. "This flight will take us up to the Metro desk where I actually work. There's maybe a dozen of us assigned to the city beat."

I let out an appreciative whistle that echoed in the concrete stairway.

"I had about the same reaction. Of course, Lois is the star," he remarked, and what fondness he kept out of his tone was still there in his mind. Except it was a little more than fondness. "She always gets the biggest scoops, and I follow along behind with the human interest angles." He had reached the top of the flight and opened the door to the fourth floor. Past his shoulder, I could see Lane standing as if she were waiting for us.

I wasn't far wrong. When we emerged, she said, "There you are. Clark, Perry wants to see you."

Kent furrowed his brow. "What's up?"

Lane shrugged. "I'm just the messenger here. Don't worry, though," she added, crossing to me and taking me by the elbow, "I'll look after your guest. Mr. - what was it again? Smith?"

"Gray," I supplied, made uneasy by the pattern of her thoughts.

"Right. Go on, Smallville."

Kent hesitated for a moment. "Sorry, Lonnie. I'm not sure what Perry wants, but -"

"You already warned me that news comes first," I reminded him. "I'll be fine."

Lane's fingers tightened on my elbow. "Yes, he will be. Has Clark shown you the interview rooms yet?"

I shook my head, and Kent nodded as if to himself. "I'll find you when I'm done," he promised, turning and walking in the direction of the office in the center of the open floor of the newsroom.

Lane watched him go for a second before urging me to turn. "The interview rooms are this way," she told me, raising her voice above the clamor of voices and phones and typewriters and leading us toward a row of doors. I followed through the smoke hazed maze of desks, trying to read the determined set of Lane's mind.

We reached one of the doors and she peered through the reinforced window cut into it before turning the knob. "These were executive offices before the Planet took over the floor," she explained, opening the door. "Perry figured the view would be too distracting to reporters."

I preceded her into the room, glancing around curiously. It was sparsely furnished, dominated by a conference table with a few chairs, but the large windows drew my attention. I crossed to them and peered down at the street below. It was only five stories up, but because the room faced the plaza, there was something of a view. "Nice," I remarked.

"Yeah," Lane agreed. An audible click sounded as she pulled the door shut behind her, and it was suddenly silent. "When Perry made them interview rooms, he also invested in state of the art soundproofing.

I inclined my head, not letting my unease show. "Impressive."

"It is. And useful. Not something you'd see in Pueblo, eh, 'Mr. Gray.'" Her back was still against the door, and her eyes were focused coolly on me.

"No," I said, ignoring the obvious quotation marks she put around my name. "They could probably use it for the new airport though." I crossed to the table and ran a hand over its surface.

"I called Michael Kelly, by the way."

I paused mid-motion, then sighed. "Say what you need to say."

"Alonzo Gray hasn't written a column for the Pueblo Nugget in 35 years. Unless you've aged very well, you aren't Gray. Which begs the question, who are you and what the hell do you want?"

I reached for one of the chairs at the table, and Lane visibly stiffened, her hand still on the knob of the door. "Relax," I suggested as I pulled out the chair and sat on it. "I'm not going to do anything."

"Answer my questions."

I met her gaze as I subtly reshaped my eyes and shifted my vocal cords. "You know, Lois."

Her eyes widened as she heard John Jones's voice and stared into his eyes. "Jones? What-"

I scowled at her, letting my features snap back to Lonnie Gray's blandness. "What you told me to do. Of course, you managed to get me away from Kent."

She took a second to regain her composure, but in that second, I caught a flash from her mind that was enough to send me reeling. I controlled my features, retained my scowl. Lane did not know about my telepathy - yet. "You could have given me some -"

"Some clue? Why? You just want answers about Kent. You as much as said you don't care how I get them."

She crossed her arms, and once more her mind flickered across her suspicion. I cursed the drink that had dampened my sensitivity before. "Well? Superman was here this morning. What's the verdict?"

I dropped my hands from the surface of the table so she wouldn't see me clench my fists. I was too tired, too angry for subtlety. I spoke directly into her mind. *You played me, Lane.*

She gaped, her hands falling to her sides. "What the hell?"

*It's called telepathy,* I thought at her. "You lied to me."

"No," she denied, stubbornness setting her jaw. I could feel fear curling in her at my revelation, and I felt no need to reassure her. She did not know I would never probe into her mind without invitation, that there were ethics guiding me that were as important to me as her journalistic integrity was to her. She would have no way of realizing how much I was picking just from the projecting surface of her thoughts. "I told you I wanted to know the link between Kent and Superman. That is not a lie."

"You didn't tell me you suspected that they are the same person." I paused. "You led me to believe that there was a story here, a link to some set of crimes."

Her expression remained defiant. "Is there?"

"I think you know the answer to that. Or you wouldn't have set me on this wild goose chase."

"It's not-"

"Stop it, Lane." *Stop it,* I emphasized in her mind.

She pulled out the chair across from me and dropped into it with an angry expression. "Fine, Jones. What do you want?"

"Let's start with the truth for a change."

"What do you want me to tell you? Why I wanted to find out about Kent? You already read that from my mind."

I didn't bother to deny it. "Why me? Why did you bring me out of my hole to play matchmaking games?"

She glared at me and spat two words at me that should never come out of a woman's mouth.

"You wouldn't want that any more than I would," I stated levelly. "But I do not appreciate being threatened and hassled because you want a boyfriend."

"What the hell do you know, Jones?" she railed. "This isn't about wanting a boyfriend."

"The hell it's not."

"Fine, let's say it is. You have any idea what it means to be a woman like me in this city? Even a clue?"

"You know what I am, Lane," I reminded her. "There's a lot of things I don't begin to understand about this world."

"Yeah, and I bet everything you do know you got from that asshole, Riordan."

"Gus-"

"Gus ran around on me, Jones. He treated me like a cheap tramp, and you know it because you were there."

I closed my mouth, remembering how Gus was with women. It wasn't a secret. He ran with Lois longer than anyone until Lorna, and even then, he was far from exclusive with his affections.

She read my recognition on my face. "And then there was Lex." She snorted, and I could feel how raw her anger still was. "You know what it feels like to be used?"

"It seems to me you've just been teaching me that," I remarked, and she had the decency to look abashed.

"Do you blame me? I hired you, Jones."

"So this is your revenge on me because I let you know your billionaire boyfriend was a thug? Next time I do you a favor, cut to the chase and shoot me."

She ignored my comments, continuing her train of thought. "I hired you, but you threw in with Wayne." She looked out the windows. "He found you through me."

There was a heavy throb of regret in her tone, echoed in her mind. I was surprised, unaware of the fleeting relationship between Wayne and Lois. Bruce had yielded his identity as Batman to me and kept secret the pillow talk that had caused our paths to cross. I started to wonder what else they had talked about, but I couldn't think it through. My head was beginning to ache, caught in the mess of painful memory and the long unpracticed habit of controlled telepathic scanning.

The bottle was easier.

I spoke softly. "Did Wayne say anything to you about Kent?"

Lois started. "No. You think - oh god. Do you think Wayne thought Clark was Superman, too?"

I shook my head, revealing what I had already decided about her theory. "I don't think he is."

Lois stared at me incredulously. "What do you mean, you don't think he is? He and Superman have never been in the same place. Ever."

"If you're so sure, why did you hire me?"

"Because I can't prove it! Dammit, Jones. Use your damned telepathy or something."

"It doesn't work that way," I told her, not caring to explain why. "But if you can't prove it-"

"It's true," she insisted stubbornly. "It has to be. Occam's razor." Her eyes narrowed at me suddenly. "You're being awfully bold in questioning me, Jones," she pointed out. "Do I need to remind you-"

"You won't," I cut her off. "You never would have told. I realize that now." And it was true. I could see clearly how little there was in it for her to ruin me. She had bluffed me into this case.

She tried to continue her defiance, but I could see in her eyes that she was defeated.

"You could have told me the truth, Lois."

She turned away from me. "After all the contempt I showed for him, you'd've believed I was interested in Kent?"

I resisted the urge to reach out to her and try to give comfort, opting for words. "Even where I'm from, love was always a mysterious force."

She looked at me sharply. "I didn't say I loved him."

I stood up and walked to the door. "You want to," I pointed out. "That's why you want him to be Superman."

"I-"

"It's none of my business, Lane. But you should ask yourself where all your exciting men have gotten you before you go wishing Clark Kent to be something more than he is."

She didn't answer me, instead asking, "That's it, then?"

I shook my head. "I don't think Clark Kent is Superman, but there's something here I need to figure out. For me."

She didn't say anything else, and I turned the knob and opened the door of the interview room. With uncanny timing, I caught a glimpse of Clark Kent through the haze of cigarette smoke. He was ducking down a hallway, his thoughts loud and clear and making a liar of me. I would owe Lois an apology ... later.

No one was looking, so I let myself disappear as I followed the trail of the man who was quietly off to save the world - again. It seemed Clark Kent was Superman after all.


	15. Chapter 15

I sat in a closet in the Daily Planet building, perched on boxes of paper. I had followed Kent this far, but I had decided to let him make his exit instead of confronting him. No sense keeping Superman from wherever he was needed, and he likely would stop if he realized he had been outed. He would be back, though, entering as he exited - through the window that opened to the air shaft. I had already found Kent's clothes, neatly folded and stowed behind a stack of boxes on a high shelf.  
I was no longer invisible, nor was I Lonnie Gray. I was in a closet, out of sight, and my body relaxed into the long-practiced form of John Jones. I'd been Jones for 15 years, taking my lumps like any other man. Whatever else I was, I'd earned my human face. Plus, it wasn't a face I had to think about. It was just me.

As Jones, I was thinking a lot. I had all the pieces of a puzzle, I knew I did, but they were refusing to fit together in my mind.

Clark Kent was Superman. I should've been able to suss that on our first meeting, a passing hello in the lobby of the Planet two days before I followed Doug Canberra to a warehouse in Suicide Slum. My telepathy was sharper then, undulled by two years of Jack Daniels. Few humans I knew could compartmentalize their lives in their thoughts, even if they could do so in their actions. When I met Bruce Wayne, he had thought like Batman while he reminded himself to maintain his social face.

Clark Kent - was Clark Kent. I had caught the whisper of his thoughts in transition when he had passed through the news room, or else I would still be doubting Lois' suspicion. His was not a human mind, not even an augmented one. Nor was it - as was popularly speculated - the mind of a machine, some invented creature or the product of some experiment. Superman was not of Earth.

Not of Earth, but raised here. Kent's memories of home and family were not invented. They were purely his own, without the taste of tampering.

I tried for a moment to imagine arriving on Earth as a child, being raised by a loving family. I shook off the thought before it could proceed further. I knew it would have been my death warrant. I knew about what had happened in New Mexico. Whether by accident or design, Kent must have arrived on this planet with a human face.

And somehow or another, Bruce Wayne had figured it out. Unlike a dual identity, that kind of secret could be kept from me by a human, particularly by a disciplined mind that was aware of my telepathy. I would not rape and plunder another mind by plowing deeply for its secrets.

The clues added up, though. Pennyworth had told me that Wayne had challenged Luthor's bid to own the Planet because of Clark Kent. He had also said that Wayne's boy - Dick - did not and should not know.

I thought again about Kent and his hospitable openness, his small town charm. He loved his home, his "parents." And he had to know about New Mexico as much as I did. Humans did not deal well with aliens. Government experiments could be for the public good. Aliens must have agendas of conquest. Even Superman's good will could be viewed as a ploy to win public confidence. Lane's initial pitch when she had hired me was a forceful reminder of that.

If Superman were outed as an alien, and Clark Kent was known to be Superman - I closed my eyes, too easily imagining a scene from a horror movie of townsfolk with torches and pitchforks. A man who could bend steel with his bare hands could break a human without breaking a sweat. If given a choice between taking one life and losing his friends and family? Plenty of men would kill to protect a secret. Bruce Wayne had kept Kent's secret to protect his ward.

My eyes snapped open in a sudden panic. Had Lex Luthor known? Was that-

No, I reassured myself. Luthor wanted the Planet in order to have some control over the news. He was savvy, and knew the power of the media. By making a bid to buy the paper, he had invited the reporters of the Planet to investigate his motives. He had presented himself as a man with nothing to hide and had built a life to support that allegation. The only link between Luthor and his shadowy underworld history was Douglas Canberra. When he died...

He had been supposed to die, I realized belatedly, cursing myself for missing it before. The warehouse fire was supposed to be more thorough, destroying the last vestiges of Luthor's past, including Canberra. Luthor had not anticipated that I would be on Canberra's tail, and I had not anticipated that Batman would be on mine. It was the presence of Bruce Wayne's body in the rubble that had prompted the investigation that had revealed Luthor's shady dealings.

Wayne's body and Lane's persistent series of articles, keeping the whole sordid affair in the eyes of the public. Revenge on Luthor, I wondered, or justice for Wayne? I'd always read it as the former, but I had not known that Lois had shared Wayne's bed. I could see how it played out, each leading the other on in hopes of finding out what each knew until they were in each other's arms. Had Wayne planted the seeds of suspicion in Lois' head? Or had she come to her ideas on her own?

Not that it mattered. I could only imagine that Wayne had put it together in much the same way Lane had, and he had to figure that eventually, Luthor would figure it out, too. And Luthor was ruthless. Bruce Wayne had undoubtedly wanted to get in the newspaper business in order to prevent putting a potent weapon in Luthor's hands.

Or he was trying to claim a weapon for himself.

The thought troubled me, but it didn't scan. I had watched enough of Batman's war on crime that I could not imagine him trying to mobilize Superman. Contain him, maybe. Study him. Figure out how he could be stopped if he ever did threaten the earth.

Unbidden, my mind flashed back to Suite 1502 of the Parkview Hotel, the night before Bruce Wayne died. Bruce's voice sounded in my memory. "You aren't what I expected."

I had smiled at him. "You thought I would want you to take me to your leader?"

"With all your powers? I'm surprised you haven't at least made a bid to change the world, if not take it over."

His tone had been a mix of wishfulness and fear, and I remember feeling the need to reassure him. "No one wants me making decisions for anyone's world. I don't want to make decisions for anyone. I just want to live out my life."

"Happily ever after?"

"I haven't earned that."

There had been a long pause in the conversation, during which Bruce had poured himself a club soda and offered me one.

"I know how you mean," he'd finally said, and I could feel his aching memory of his parents, gunned down in cold blood, "or at least, how you'd mean if you were human. But I don't know what might make you change your mind. Hell, I don't know why you haven't decided we're all vermin, too uncivilized to live."

"Life is learning, Bruce. And hope."

He had given me a hard look at that, as if he wanted to believe me. He still hadn't taken a seat.

"I wish I had more of your faith."

"You have more than you know."

He'd snorted then, shaking his head. "So what happens if you change your mind? Humanity could never stop you."

"You're wrong. Every creature has a weakness. You already know mine."

He'd considered a moment, then picked up the book of matches in the unused hotel ashtray. He lit one, and I flinched, forcing myself to look. He watched me for a moment, then quickly snuffed the match with a vaguely horrified expression. I had begun to lose my shape, my heart beating irregularly and my breathing shutting down. In my head I had heard a sound I wouldn't understand until later - my family's dying screams.

"This would kill you."

"Eventually."

He had nodded. "Good to know," he had stated, dropping the spent match in the ash tray. But his mind was unsettled, and I suspect I had inadvertently projected my memories.

Now, in the quiet of the supply closet, I wrapped my arms around my chest and shivered. I remember thinking at the time that maybe Bruce Wayne could be a friend, that maybe my assumptions of how humans must react to me should be revised. We'd shared a bond that night, and twenty-four hours later he was dead.

I closed my eyes, thinking I should cry for him and that neither men nor Martians were supposed to cry. I lost myself in the past, but wherever Superman had gone was not as big a deal as I had anticipated. My eyes snapped open when a hand found my throat, and as I stared at a big red "S" on a yellow field, the man of steel hissed, "What the hell are you?"


	16. Chapter 16

I lifted my eyes from Superman's chest, raising my gaze slowly to his face. His eyes were a hard shade of blue, and they glowed faintly, giving him a menacing appearance that was at odds with his usual public face. His fingers easily spanned my throat, a warning or a threat.  
His thoughts were jumbled and hard to read, but I could catch a fractured memory of him flying over the Planet, peering through the walls to this closet and seeing... me. It was odd to see the way he did; he hadn't picked up my externalities, but his vision instead registered something amorphous and clearly inhuman. Why had he not seen through me before?

The question was shaken from my thoughts by the tightening of Superman's fingers. "Answer me."

I blinked at him and forced a confused expression onto my face. "You know who I am," I said. "John Jones."

His fingers flexed enough to hurt. "Don't lie to me. I can see you're not human."

I belatedly raised my hand to his wrist, realizing my failure to make this defensive move reinforced his deduction about my inhumanity. I clutched his wrist with a human level of strength. "My name is John Jones," I gritted out.

His grip did not tighten, but it didn't loosen either. "Why did you kill Bruce Wayne?"

It felt like a slap to the face. "I didn't-" His hand began to close, and so did mine. His eyes widened a little when he felt my grip, and I heard his mental surprise. He hesitated.

"I didn't kill Wayne," I stated, letting my anger come through. "If anyone did, you did."

I was startled to feel his mind reel with guilt. It had been a blind, angry verbal stab on my part. Superman could have saved him, had he been there. He hadn't been, but he was here now, his hand clenching tighter at my throat. "He knew. Damn him, he knew."

Superman wasn't fully himself, I realized, feeling the panic in his mind. He wasn't seeing me, not really. He was seeing his family and friends, imagining threats - remembering threats - that had come when people knew who he was. Superman could bend steel and deflect bullets, but his adoptive parents? His friends? Lois Lane?

He was lifting me from where I sat, barely conscious of his actions. He looked like he was ready to cry. "Luthor was in Keystone that night. I knew he was planning something, so I followed him. I should've realized - but I knew Wayne knew. I must've -" He cut himself off, his features hardening. "You know," he accused coldly.

He had me at arms length, my feet dangling, his fingers tightly enough around my throat to cut off my air. I tried to piece together what he was telling me, pulling from his thoughts, trying to guess how to reassure him. I wanted to reassure him, realizing he was carrying guilt he hadn't earned. He had been in Keystone, following Luthor, but in the time since the fire, he had convinced himself that he had ignored the clues that Wayne and I had put together. He believed he had kept himself away from Metropolis on purpose, had allowed the death of Bruce Wayne because he knew Bruce Wayne knew about the connection between Clark Kent and Superman.

What did he want from me? A confession of my own knowledge, I guessed, but there was no way to force words past the hand that closed my throat. I clutched Superman's wrist, dangled from his grasp, and decided to try to answer him telepathically. I projected directly into his mind, *I know.*

I recognized my mistake too late to undo it. I meant only a confirmation; he heard a threat. He knew I wasn't human, and he didn't know any aliens save himself. He had been raised on Earth, with the same fears of extraterrestrials as any human. Even more fears, as it happened; he believed aliens would be led to Earth by his presence.

When I spoke in his mind, he panicked. His hand tightened in shocked reaction, and a loud CRACK sounded as my neck broke.

I went limp, although not for the reason he believed, and he dropped me as if I had burned him. He backed himself against the wall, staring in horror as I fell to the ground. "No," he whimpered. "I didn't - I - oh god -"

*Relax,* I projected at him, bending my own rules enough to speak past his conscious thoughts. I didn't want him to flee. I had no idea what he might do in his present state of mind.

I deadened the pain of my body and carefully realigned my spine, restoring myself and untangling myself from the heap I had fallen in. I did not take my feet immediately, instead sitting on the floor and bracing my back against the boxes of paper I had been sitting on before. Superman remained pressed against the wall. "What are you?" he whispered, fear in his question.

I looked up at him and rubbed my neck. "My name is J'onn J'onzz," I said quietly. "I mean you no more harm than you mean me."

"I just killed you," he protested, shock and denial ruling his thoughts.

"I'm still alive," I pointed out. I patted the floor. "Sit down," I suggested. "We should talk."

He stared at me, his eyes so wide the whites were visible all around the dark blue of his irises. Despite the costume, he didn't look like Superman. He didn't look like Clark Kent, either. He looked like a scared boy.

"Please?" I implored.

He slowly slid down the wall, his legs folding under him until we were on the same level. Our knees brushed together, and I studied him as he continued his wide-eyed stare.

"Talk to me," I directed.

"Why are you still alive?"

Fair enough a question, even if he should have guessed the answer. "I am not human," I reminded him. "Not any more than you are."

He flinched at that. "But I broke-"

"Nothing that couldn't be mended. You can see that. The same way you saw that I wasn't human when you were checking to make sure this closet was safe to return to."

"How-?"

I touched my temple. "Telepathy," I explained, not willing to risk using it again unless I had to. It was clear enough that I didn't understand his mind with its mix of human prejudice and alien physiology.

"You read my mind?" Panic was creeping back in to override his shockiness.

"Only what you were projecting," I said hastily. "That's not how I know about you and Kent."

The mention of the Kent name focused him, and his eyes narrowed. For a second, he believed that he might be able to convince me that they were two separate people, denial replacing his fear. "Leave Kent out of this," he warned.

I shook my head. "It's too late for that," I said sadly, understanding too well how much he wanted to protect his loved ones. "You're better at this double life thing than most people, but-"

"Most people?" he interrupted. "Like you?"

I considered him for a moment, then willed my face to look like Lonnie Gray. Superman recoiled, drawing his body away from me with what might have been revulsion. "Not like me," I stated, continuing to change and letting my features blur into my true face.

Superman stayed rigidly uncertain as he stared at me.

"This me doesn't have a place on this world," I said, the words compressed and thinned by Martian vocal cords too weak to deal easily with the thick Earth air. I lowered my eyes to look at my own green flesh, every part of me aching. "No matter how much I might want one," I added.

Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, my vulnerability reached him where nothing else had. "Where are you from?" he asked.

I glanced up, and his face was full of pity. "Mars, once. Now?" I shrugged. "A rathole in Uptown."

"Mars," he repeated. "Not like H.G. Wells wrote."

I didn't laugh or comment. I stayed silent, listening to his thoughts shift from raw fear to something more coherent.

"You aren't here for me," he finally said.

I shook my head. "I'm here because I can't go home."

"Can't?"

"Everyone's dead." My heart broke a little to say it out loud, and I felt myself resuming the dimensions of John Jones. He was hard-boiled. I was just brittle.

Superman's hand touched my knee. "Like me," he said, and I caught a mental glimpse of an infant hurtling to Earth from an exploded planet.

I didn't say anything.

"My parents taught me to be careful with my powers," he began, and I knew he meant Ma and Pa Kent, the figures who had graced his memory when I had talked to him as Clark Kent. "They love me, and they thought if anyone saw, I would get taken away. That's what they told me, anyway, when I was a kid." He paused. "I was older when they had to explain to me that people would be afraid."

His memory was strong, and I could feel the confused hurt he had felt at the time. His hand was still on my knee, and I think he needed the contact. No, I knew he needed the contact. He was raised in a family where touch was a part of life, and I realized that this made the city unbearably lonely to him as Clark Kent. His touch reminded me how unbearably lonely I was.

"Other people have figured it out, about Clark Kent's powers," he revealed. "It happened a couple of times, when I was a teenager. And they told me what they would do if I didn't do what they wanted." There was anger at the memory.

"People use love," I stated, remembering my conversation with Lois Lane.

He laughed, short and bitter. "I know," he said. "And what happened to those people - they died. Not because of anything I did, but because of what I didn't do. And I was free of them." He paused again. "I thought that meant something. That there were forces that made sure bad guys were punished."

"There aren't."

"I know that now."

We sat, digesting this together.

"Wayne never told Luthor," Superman said.

"He never told me," I added. "I only found out he knew in the last two days, and even then, I didn't know who you were until an hour ago."

Superman started and looked hard at me. "An hour ago?"

"Lane suspects-" I began, stopping when he suddenly stood up.

"No," he protested, fear again rising in his mind. "She can't-"

"Calm down," I ordered, not bothering to move. "She's not going to do anything about it. Maybe confront you, but only if she's sure. That's why she hired me."

He looked down at me in confusion. "Hired you?"

"I'm a private detective," I said heavily. "Whatever I was before, now I'm just another sorry stiff who makes a living chasing after other people's secrets."

"But why would Lois-"

I shook my head and braced myself on the floor, levering myself onto my feet. "Why don't you ask me the last case she hired me for?"

"I don't - that's private. Isn't it?"

I met Superman's eyes. "She hired me to find out what Lex Luthor was up to. Just like you followed him to make sure he wouldn't hurt her."

He gasped. "What - how-"

"It doesn't matter." I patted his shoulder, coming to a decision. "You should change. Maybe go talk to Lane. I'd suggest telling her the truth, and when you do, give her my best."

He was looking at me with a dumbfounded expression, but when I started to fade toward invisible, he said, "Wait."

I turned expectantly.

"You won't - you won't say anything to anyone? Or do anything to - you know?" He wanted to trust me, I sensed, but he was still afraid.

"Who am I going to tell?" I pointed out. "I don't need to use you. Your powers aren't going to get me anything I can't get myself."

He digested my words. "And that's it? You just... disappear?"

"I don't need much from life," I said, "and what I do need, this world hasn't seen fit to give me. So yes, I think disappearing is as good an option as any." I tried not to think about my promises to Gus Riordan, or the secrets I owed to Dick Grayson. I was lying to myself as much as to Superman, but I needed my lie.

"But-" he hesitated, and I realized his fear was shifting. His expression was serious, thoughtful. "Maybe I need you."

I wanted to laugh. I managed to smile indulgently. "You're Superman," I reminded him.

"I'm an alien," he shot right back.

"You're loved." There was enough bitterness in my voice to back him up, hurt flashing over his features. He was without words, so I filled the silence. "When you see Lois, tell her to keep what she owes me." I turned on heel. "I need a drink," I muttered, bending the light around me and flying invisibly out the air shaft window. I didn't even try to make sense of the tangled emotions I left behind.


	17. Chapter 17

I found myself over Suicide Slum before I realized where I was heading. I stopped in midair, still invisible, and felt my stomach wrench.  
Two years could be a long time, even in the slum. Long enough, at least, for the blackened shell of a former warehouse to be pulled down and carted away. From the air, nothing in the weed-choked lot below me recalled rum-fed fires that rose 50 feet into the night sky.

I made myself descend, forced myself to remember the layout of the building.

Last year's stalks of burdock and thistles rose almost over my head when I finally settled to the ground. Grass and dandelions greened the ground, and a hard beaten path cut the corner of the lot.

I closed my eyes, fighting the memory of smoke and flame even as I reconstructed the building in my mind. I had landed nearly dead center in the lot, not more than 10 feet from where Douglas Canberra had killed Hortense Arroyo and might as well have killed Batman.

I moved through the weeds, disturbing a scrawny cat who hissed at me despite being unable to see me. I knew when I reached the spot.

I knew because my knees buckled and for a painful moment, I once more felt the searing of my flesh, my hopeless, helpless effort to stretch my mind past the flames and save Hortense.

I gave up on invisibility, focusing instead on catching my breath. There was no fire now. The air smelled like wet earth, not roasted meat. I had survived, and I still didn't know why.

I dug my fingers into the sandy soil and wanted that night back to do again, even though if I were honest, I knew I wouldn't do things differently. I couldn't have. Not with the flames dancing.

I leaned my face down and kissed the ground, a gesture for spent funeral pyres from another life. "I'm sorry, Hortense," I whispered. "Good-bye."

It took me a few moments to stand up again, and when I rose, I felt a startled reaction from someone walking along the sidewalk. He didn't look at me, and I felt him rationalizing my sudden appearance as I made my way to the foot path across the corner. By the time I got there, he was gone.

I spent an uncertain moment on the path, looking to the corner of the lot it cut off. That was where I had left Bruce, but he had already heard my good-bye.

I was done, but I wasn't ready to go yet. I had told Superman that I needed a drink, and standing on the site of the fire, I decided I had been right. One more for the road.

I made my way up Rider Street, my hat pulled low. The few people I met gave me wide berth, and I was grateful for it. I stopped at the first bar I found.

Five of the eight stools were occupied, and a couple argued in low tones at a booth. No one looked up as I entered. I looked like a man who would drink at noon.

I took a seat and the bartender came silently over. "Jack Daniels, neat," I ordered, and in a moment, a rock tumbler of my old friend was sitting in front of me.

I lifted the glass and studied the amber liquid. It seemed dark in the smoky bar, as if it were drinking the light from the day. Dark, but warm.

Like Hortense's eyes.

She wanted to be my gal Friday. She thought I was a hero.

Down the bar, someone lit a cigarette, and the flame was reflected by the whiskey in the glass. Just the way the flames around my body reflected in Hortense's eyes as she tried to beat them out. I made myself close my eyes until I was sure the fire was gone.

Hortense thought she loved me.

She did love me. I put her off, told her she was too young to know her heart, and I was right, but I was wrong, too. "You're noble," she told me one evening with the seriousness that only comes from youth, "and whatever your secrets are, I bet you never hurt anyone on purpose."

She believed in John Jones, not a drunken sot who was running away.

"What I need, this world has not seen fit to give me. That was what I had said to Superman, knowing it was a lie.

I had gotten what I needed in spades, and just like home, it had gone up in flames.

I was ashamed.

I set my glass down and rose from my bar stool. I left the bar without drinking a drop.


	18. Chapter 18

It was about two in the afternoon when I walked into the lobby of the Parkview Hotel. I went directly to the front desk and gave the clerk a smile. "Hi," I greeted. "I need to leave a message for Pennyworth. Suite 1502?"  
The clerk gave me a look as if he were trying to place me. "I'm afraid I can't help you, sir. 1502's checked out."

"Really?" I shouldn't have been surprised, but then, Grayson had sounded ready to leave town when we parted company. "Huh. Well, give me a bit of paper anyway," I suggested. "I'll mail it."

"Of course, sir," the clerk agreed, supplying the requested stationery.

"Sir?" Gus's voice interrupted, and I turned. "Bert, this is John Jones." Gus threw a companionable arm around my shoulders, hooking it just around the back of my neck to gesture a hint of horseplay. "There's nothing to 'sir' here."

I shrugged out of Gus's hold, but I was smiling. "Hey, Gus. I was just coming to look for you," I told him, "after I get this message off."

Gus grinned. "Solve your case?"

"As solved as it's going to be," I said. "Just give me a minute."

"No sweat. I gotta go punch out anyway. See you back here in a bit."

Gus disappeared, and I took the hotel stationery to a writing desk in the lobby. I picked up a pen and began to write a string of numbers. Latitude and longitude, down to seconds. A second set of numbers keyed to the plat map of Metropolis. Then I drew an arrow pointing down and a stylized bat.

I contemplated the sheet of paper. Cryptic enough? Too cryptic? Given what I had learned of Dick Grayson, I suspected he would figure it out quickly enough. I put my pen to paper again, then changed my mind. I had promised Grayson I would tell him the why of Bruce Wayne's death, but some coded phrase would not satisfy his need to know. I wasn't even sure what I could write. He died for his duty? For justice? Because he cared too much? It all seemed trite, like empty phrases that anyone might utter, even if each were to some degree true.

I frowned and tapped the pen against my chin, then set the pen down. This note would bring Grayson back to Metropolis, and he would find me again. I knew it. It would be better to explain everything to his face - at least, as much as I could explain.

Dick Grayson was smart enough to figure out who Superman was if I gave him a hint, but Batman had not wanted the boy subject to the danger that knowledge could bring. I might owe Dick Grayson some explanations, but Bruce Wayne had been a friend to me. Some secrets should be kept.

I folded the letter and slipped it into a hotel envelope. I scratched a line through the printed return address and wrote "Jones" beside it. I was addressing the envelope when Gus found me.

"Wayne Manor," he read across the desk. "John, you sure that's such a good idea?"

I licked the flap of the envelope and sealed it. "It's all over, Gus," I told him, and as I said it, I knew it was true. The ghosts would stay with me, but I knew now they could give me strength.

"Do you mean that?" Gus asked, his voice low and his eyes studying my face with careful concern.

"Got a stamp?" I asked, and he reached for his wallet. He handed me the postage, and I affixed it to the envelope. I could imagine Hortense smiling and Bruce nodding his approval. Further back in memory, my wife held me and my daughter beamed, for once not in flames. I stood up purposefully. "I want to mail this," I said, "then Was Ed's?"

The Riordan grin reappeared. "You buying?"

I snorted as I led the way across the lobby. "I don't think so. I need to save up for office space."

Gus actually paused and had to take a couple of quick steps to catch up. "Really?" He sounded almost afraid to believe me.

I stepped out of the lobby and into the sun. I raised my face to the blue sky and felt myself smiling. I turned my head and started toward the mailbox. Gus kept pace. I glanced down the street. "Think there'd be space in the Liberty Tower?"

I opened the mailbox, but Gus put his hand on my arm as I reached the letter toward the slot. "John," he said seriously, "are you sure this is what you want?"

I might have wept for his honest concern. Twenty-four hours ago he had tried to coax me back among the living by forgiving my two year drunk and inviting me home. Now he worried at my sudden resolve, not because he didn't mean his offer, but because he remembered other friends suddenly "cured" only to be found dead by their own hand days later.

Gus Riordan did not want me to die. He was telling himself I was too stubborn to die.

"Are you trying to get out of buying lunch?" I challenged him.

He studied a minute more, then let me drop my letter into the mail. "The Liberty Tower is passe," he decided. "I'd find a place further south."

"Think Rosie'd be okay with that commute?"

Somehow, that reassured him more than my other talk, and his reason was loud in his thoughts. *John would never drag someone else down with him.* His words, however, were only, "We'll have to ask him sometime."

"Absolutely," I agreed. "In the meantime, I want lunch."

We walked together toward Adams Street, and the early summer sun felt good. Warm. Homey. I was John Jones, and I was reclaiming my life.

I could feel Gus smiling at my elbow. At the corner of Harding, he could no longer contain himself. He slapped my shoulder affectionately. "Damn, it's good to have you back, Jones."

I only smiled. It was good to be back.

The End


End file.
